The Secret Sentry: The Untold History of the National Security Agency

THE UNTOLD HISTORY OF

THE NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY

MATTHEW AID

THE SECRET SENTRY

The Untold History of the
National Security Agency

MATTHEW M. AID

Bloomsbury Press
N ew York ■ Berlin * London

To Harry, Rita, and Jonathan Aid
My Family, My Best Friends, and My Staunchest

Supporters
Gratis etemum

Know your enemy and know yourself, find naught
in fear for 100 battles.

Know yourself but not your enemy, find level oj
loss and victory.

Know thy enemy but not yourself, wallow in defeat
every time.

^SUN TZU

There are no secrets except the secrets that keep
themselves.

^GEORGE BERNARD SHAW,
BACK TO METHUSELAH

Contents

Cover

Title

Contents

Dedication

Prologue: The Origins of the American Cryptologic Effort Against

Russia

1. Roller-Coaster Ride: The Travails of American Communications

Intelligence: 1945-1950

2. The Storm Breaks: SIGINT and the Korean War: 1950-1951

3. Fight for Survival: The Creation of the National Security Agency

4. The Inventory of Ignorance: SIGINT During the Fisenhower

Administration: 1953-1961

5. The Crisis Years: SIGINT and the Kennedy Administration: 1961-

1963

6. Errors of Fact and Judgment: SIGINT and the Gulf of Tonkin

Incidents

7. The Wilderness of Pain: NSA and the Vietnam War: 1964-1969

8. Riding the Whirlwind: NSA During the Johnson Administration:

1963-1969

9. Tragedy and Triumph: NSA During the Nixon. Ford, and Carter

Administrations

10. Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano: NSA During the Reagan and

Rush Administrations

11. Troubles in Paradise: From Desert Storm to the War on Terrorism

12. Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory: 9/11 and the Invasion

of Afghanistan

13. A Mountain out of a Molehill: NSA and the Iraqi Weapons of

Mass Destruction Scandal

14. The Dark Victory: NSA and the Invasion of Iraq: March-April

2003

15. The Good, the Bad, and the Uglv: SIGINT and Combating the

Insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan

16. Crisis in the Ranks: The Current Status of the National Security

Agency

Acknowled2ments

Notes Glossary

Notes

A Note on the Author

Imprint

PROT.OGIJE

The Origins of the American Cryptologic
Effort Against Russia

Another man’s soul is darkness. Does anybody
ever really know anybody else?

^RUSSIAN PROVERB

The consensus of historians (and the overwhelming
burden of evidence) dates the initial stages of the Cold
War to well before the end of World War IT The United
States would emerge from the war as a superpower with
arguably the world’s strongest armed forces, sole
possession of the atomic bomb, a vastly expanded
industrial base, and an infrastructure untouched by the
ravages of war. But on the negative side, the country had
at best a rocky relationship with one of its war time allies,
the Soviet Union. By the time Nazi Germany and Japan
had surrendered, Russia was on a collision course with
both the United States and Britain. It was not long before
the Soviet Union was regarded as “the main enemy” by
the Western nations. Since it remained a rigidly closed
society under Joseph Stalin’s regime, the lack of

transparency was a major factor driving the Cold War.
Because the United States had only a very limited idea of
what was going on in the Soviet Union, its satellite
countries in Eastern Europe, and communist China, the
emerging confrontation became all the more dangerous.
But one of the most secret resources that had greatly
contributed to the victory of the Allied Powers — the
United States and Britain’s ability to intercept and read
the communications of our former enemies Germany,
Japan, and Italy, both in the clear and encoded — ^would be
quickly redirected to the task of gathering
communications intelligence about the new Sino-Soviet
threat.

It is difficult to imagine, many decades later, just how
mortal that threat was perceived to be, particularly after
the Soviet Union detonated its first atomic device in the
summer of 1949. The prospect of a “nuclear Pearl
Harbor” meant that the United States would rely heavily
on an increasingly large and expensive communications
intelligence effort.

Carter Clarke Declares War on Russia

In a certain sense. Brigadier General Carter Clarke was
the founding father of the National Security Agency
(NS A). A blunt, often profane, hard-drinking, and
demanding individual, Clarke lacked the polish of his
fellow officers who had gone to West Point. He began his

career as an enlisted man and worked his way up through
the ranks. Despite a lack of previous intelligence
experience and a file drawer full of bad fitness reports
(Clarke was a real maverick), he was the man the U.S.
Army selected to run the analytic side of SIGINT Army
G-2, the Special Branch. A college dropout (he joined the
army and served under General John Pershing chasing
Pancho Villa in Mexico), he was a highly intelligent man
and an autodidact.

Clarke was described by many who worked with him as
being a tough, impatient, no-nonsense workaholic who
abhorred conformity and was intolerant of bureaucracy.
When things did not get done to his satisfaction, Clarke’s
volatile temperament usually took over. Former
colleagues recall that his temper tantrums were legendary.
A former army officer said, “I knew that Clarke had an
explosive temper. Although quite a decent person, he
laced his language with frequent bursts of profanity.” His
detractors, who were many, described him as loud,
uncouth, brash, and argumentative, with a tendency
toward overstatement when trying to make a point or win
an argument. And yet, despite his brashness, gruff talk,
and stern demeanor, Clarke earned the respect (and fear)
of virtually all the U.S. Army intelligence officials he
dealt with. A former senior NS A official, Frank B.
Rowlett, described Clarke as “a very unconventional man
and a man of considerable moral courage [who] would
spit in your face and laugh at you.”-

Clarke’s Special Branch was a component of Army G-2
in the Pentagon created after Pearl Harbor, the unit to
which all intercepts were sent for analysis and reporting to
consumers. It only worked on SIGINT materials, while
the rest of Army G-2 worked on more mundane materials,
like military attache reports. The army’s SIGINT
organization, the Signal Security Agency (SSA),
commanded by Brigadier General W. Preston Corderman,
was a separate field agency that was (until 1944) part of
the Army Signal Corps. As noted above, all its intercept
material went to Clarke’s G-2 Special Branch.

When Clarke took command of the Special Branch of
Army G-2 (intelligence) in May 1942, the United States
was able to read the top Japanese diplomatic and military
encoded communications (which enabled U.S. forces to
win the Battle of Midway in 1942, the turning point of the
war in the Pacific) and the British were reading the
German codes generated by the Enigma machine. Despite
his rough edges, Clarke worked well with his British
counterparts in the Bletchley Park code-breaking center.
Deep down, however, he trusted no man and no nation.
According to Rowlett, “Clarke was a good man to have in
the intelligence business in our line of command [the
communications intelligence, or COMINT, field] because
he didn’t trust any nation. He just said, ‘They’re your
friends today and they’re your enemies tomorrow, and
when they’re on your side find out as much as you can
about them because you can’t when they become your

enemy.’

The United States was not only reading the codes of the
three Axis Powers; it was reading the encrypted
diplomatic and military traffic of more than forty other
countries — including our allies and neutral states. Well
before the end of the war, Clarke, like many in the
American military and government, decided that the
Soviet Union would become our next “main enemy” after
the war, and he issued an order in January 1943 to begin
cracking Russian codes. So secret and delicate was this
operation that very few people were allowed to even
know it existed, and since virtually nothing was put in
writing, the paper trail today is virtually non existent. The
U.S. Navy had its own code-breaking operation
headquartered in Washington. Though the two
cryptanalytic organizations shared code-breaking
responsibilities, cooperation was the exception rather than
the rule.-

The army code-breaking operation was headquartered in
a former girls’ preparatory school named Arlington Hall,
located in Arlington, Virginia. The main building on its
large and beautifully landscaped campus housed the
administrative offices. Tacked onto it, once the army took
over and fenced it off from the world, were two wings
that housed large open bays crammed with code breakers,
linguists, and analysts, crowded together and forced to
endure the scorching and humid Washington summers
before the widespread use of air-conditioning. Hundreds

of fans provided some relief — ^but unfortunately they blew
working papers all over the place. The sole air-
conditioning was reserved for the noisy and noxious IBM
tabulating machines. -

Clarke had some supervisory authority over Arlington
Hall Station (its official designation), but he largely
worked out of a high-security area in the Pentagon. The
intercepts of enemy communications that were picked up
by a far-flung network of listening posts, some of them in
remote areas like Ethiopia and Alaska, went to Arlington
Hall, where they were decrypted and translated. Then they
were sent on to Clarke’s analytic organization. The
intelligence product derived from intercepts was so
sensitive that its distribution was extremely limited,
reaching only a few hundred people with the highest
security clearances. The paradox here is that in order to
protect the sources and methods used to gather this
invaluable signals intelligence (SIGINT) and not tip off
the enemy that the United States was reading virtually all
of its communications, the intelligence product often had
to be “sanitized” (i.e., put in a form that would not
disclose the source of the intelligence reporting) and
sometimes did not reach those who needed it most. (Both
Admiral Husband Kimmel and General Walter Short, who
took the burden of blame for Pearl Harbor, were arguably
deprived of information that could have made the events
of December 7, 1941, a very different story.) Throughout
the war, commanders in the field below a certain level of

rank and responsibility were not furnished with this
critical information, or got it in a very watered-down
form, which tended to make the material not as useful as
it should have been, particularly because these officers
could not know just how definitive and reliable it was.
The same complaints that were voiced back then are still
heard today.

Because the British had developed a formidable code-
breaking operation that was in many ways superior to the
Americans’, once the United States entered the war there
was an almost complete sharing of information and
coordination of efforts. But the British were not apprised
of the U.S. attack on Russian codes. In any event, they
were undertaking their own effort, which they also did not
disclose to the United States.-

Well before Germany, Japan, and Italy surrendered, the
Cold War was under way, setting our quondam ally, the
Soviet Union, on a collision course with the United
States, Great Britain, and, in time, the other nations that
would become the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO). Accordingly, before Germany surrendered, the
United States and the United Kingdom decided that
everybody’s cards had to be put on the table. Prime
Minister Winston Churchill and his commanders
(particularly Brigadier General Sir Stewart Menzies, the
head of the British spy agency MI-6) firmly believed that
a concerted effort had to be made to penetrate what
Churchill described as a “riddle wrapped up inside an

enigma” — the essentially closed society of the Soviet
Union. This belief was shared by General George
Marshall, Admiral Ernest King, and just about everybody
at senior levels of the U.S. government and military —
with one exception. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
FDR wistfully believed that the United States and Russia
could “peacefully coexist” after the Allied victory. So it
was decided that he not be informed that we were spying
on our Russianally. The Russians, of course, were doing
the same thing to the United States and Britain and,
unfortunately, as we know now, doing a much better job.
The full extent of Russian espionage was made clear
when we began to read their enciphered messages. One
key early break-through came in October 1943, when a
thirty-seven-year-old lieutenant named Richard Hallock,
who before the war had been an archaeologist at the
University of Chicago, made the first break into the
Russian ciphers. Incredibly, the Soviets had reused the
pages of their one-time pad cipher keys on a number of
occasions in different kinds of message traffic. -
(A “one-time pad” used to encipher messages is a bound
set of sheets, each one printed with randomly generated
numbers — representing both words and numbers —
organized as additive “keys” and a certain number of lines
of numbers in separate “groups.” No one sheet in a pad
and no pad or set of sheets duplicates any other, except
for the matching pad’s sheets used for deciphering the
encoded message. The sheets are to be used once only and

then destroyed. If used properly, the pad provides a
virtually unbreakable code.)

The German invasion of Russia in June 1941 and the
chaos that followed had created a severe shortage of
cipher materials at Russian overseas diplomatic
establishments, leading the NKVD’sf cryptographic
department in Moscow, which produced all code and
cipher materials, to take shortcuts to fill the increasing
demand for cryptographic materials. As the German army
drew ever closer to Moscow in the winter of 1941, the
Russians apparently panicked, printing duplicates of
twenty-five thousand pages of one-time pad keys during
the first couple of months of 1942, then binding them into
onetime pad books and sending them not only to their
diplomatic and commercial establishments, but also to the
various NKVD rezidentur as (or “stations”) around the
world, thus unwittingly compromising the security of all
messages encrypted with these duplicated pads. Then, to
make matters worse, the Russians could not get new
cipher materials to their diplomatic establishments in the
United States and elsewhere because of German U-boat
activity in the North Atlantic, which hampered Soviet
merchant shipping traffic between Murmansk and the
United States. -

SIGINT Comes of Age

Beginning in early 1943, the U.S. Army’s SIGINT

collection effort slowly began to shift from Axis military
communications targets to the pre-Pearl Harbor focus on
foreign diplomatic communications traffic, largely
because of dramatic changes taking place in the global
geopolitical balance of power, with the United States
rapidly emerging as the world’s top superpower. Senior
U.S. government and military policy makers and
intelligence officers alike fully understood that while
military decrypts (Ultra) might be helping win World War
II on the battlefield, diplomatic COMINT (Magic) would
be essential to help the U.S. government “win the peace.”
There was a determination within the U.S. government
that this time around America would not be bullied or
manipulated by its now less powerful European allies or
the Russians at the peace talks that would inevitably
follow the end of the war. It would soon become clear that
Clarke’s suspicions about Soviet long-term intentions
were not only widely shared by others in the military and
the government — they would also become key factors in
how the nations of the West would respond to and then
counter Russia’s postwar strategy .-
To achieve these goals, however, the United States had
to become as self-sufficient as possible in the realm of
SIGINT. This meant that it had to put some distance
between itself and Great Britain and begin spying on
those countries or organizations that might conceivably
constitute a threat in the future. The secrecy of the
Russian effort was particularly intense. When Corder-man

inquired whether Russian traffic had been deliberately
omitted from a target list just received by his agency, he
was told that “[reference to] Russian traffic was
intentionally omitted with Clarke’s approval.”- But the
accumulating intercepts of Russian traffic from 1943 on
would yield one of the greatest U.S. COMINT harvests
ever — the program code-named Venona. Begun
immediately after the end of World War II, the decoding
and analysis would stretch over many, many years (until
the program formally ended in 1980). Venona material
gradually and retrospectively revealed the astounding
extent of Soviet intelligence activity in America and
Mexico. (Among other things, it made clear why Stalin
was not surprised by Truman’s carefully vague reference
to the atomic bomb at Potsdam.) As we will see, the
ultimate irony was that Venona’ s access was so valuable
that it could not be compromised by using the material
gathered as evidence (or even for counterintelligence
measures) against those Soviet sources (and methods)
revealed by decryption over many years.

The critical importance of the initial SIGINT effort was
underlined by the events that unfolded in the next few
years — the Berlin Crisis and subsequent Berlin Airlift
(June 1948 through July 1949) in response to Russia’s
attempt to cut off West Berlin from access by its former
allies, the detonation of the first Soviet atomic bomb in
August 1949, and the outbreak of the Korean War in June
1950. What Anglo-American code breakers could learn

about Russian capabilities and intentions was frightening
enough; what they could ^odeam about because too many
Soviet codes proved resistant to solution was an even
greater cause for worry. Clarke, Rowlett, their colleagues,
and their successors found themselves on the front line of
a secret and increasingly desperate struggle. And the U.S.
military, which soon began drawing up plans for war with
the Soviet Union, would find SIGINT even more vital
than it was in World War II, largely because Russia (as
well as its satellite nations and China) was highly resistant
to penetration by human intelligence operations.

^ The designation of the Soviet intelligence and security
service changed on numerous occasions. After the
postrevolutionary Cheka, it became the State Political
Directorate, or GPU (1922-1923); the United State
Political Directorate, or OGPU (1923-1934); the Main
Directorate for State Security, or GUGB (1934-1943); the
People’s Commissariat for State Security, or NKGB
(1943-1946); and the Ministry for State Security, or
MGB (1946-1953). From 1953 to 1954, all intelligence
and internal security functions were merged into the
Ministry for Internal Affairs (MVD). Between March
1954 and October 1991, the principal Soviet intelligence
and security service was the Committee for State Security
(KGB). In October 1991, the KGB was dissolved
following the collapse of the USSR and the abortive coup
d’etat against Mikhail Gorbachev.

CHAPTER 1

Roller-Coaster Ride

The Travails of American Communications
Intelligence: 1945-1950

When troubles come, they come not as single spies
but in battalions.

^WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE HAMLET

On August 14, 1945, the day Japan formally surrendered,
the American signals intelligence empire stood at the
zenith of its power and prestige. The U.S. Army and Navy
cryptologic organizations, the Signal Security Agency
(SSA) and the Naval Communications Intelligence
Organization (OP-20-G) respectively, together consisted
of more than thirty- seven thousand military and civilian
personnel manning thirty-seven listening posts and dozens
of tactical radio intelligence units around the world. The
reach of America’s code breakers was extraordinarily
deep, with the army alone able to read 350 diplomatic
code and cipher systems belonging to sixty countries.
Needless to say, the two American SIGINT organizations

seemed to be in much better shape, both quantitatively
and qualitatively, than the poorly funded three-hundred-
man American cryptologic establishment that had existed
when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. -

Structural changes within army and navy COMINT
organizations came quickly after the end of the war. On
September 15, 1945, the SSA was redesignated as the
Army Security Agency (ASA), which was given complete
control over all U.S. Army COMINT activities.- On July
10, 1946, the U.S. Navy COMINT organization OP-20-G
was deactivated and all navy COMINT intercept and
processing units were merged into a new and much
smaller organization called the Communications
Supplementary Activities (CSA).-

The Terrible Peace

Within hours of Japan’s surrender, the thousands of
American radio intercept operators and intelligence
analysts around the world suddenly found themselves
unemployed as the few remaining Japanese radio
transmitters went off the air. Listening posts around the
world were given “make-work” projects until the intercept
operators could be discharged and sent home.- The same
was true at the army and navy SIGINT analysis centers in
Washington, D.C.-

President Harry Truman’s order for rapid
demobilization after Japan’s surrender took its toll on

America’s SIGINT capability. General Corderman was
forced to dismantle the unit he had personally spent so
much time and effort building, and he did so amid intense
opposition from Army G-2 and his own top deputies, such
as his operations chief, Frank Rowlett, who urged him to
fight the demobilization order. Decades later, a still-angry
Rowlett recalled that his boss “made a speech to them,
and in essence what he said was, we’d like you to stay but
here’s your hat.”-

Over the next 120 days, the army and navy COMINT
organizations lost 80 percent of their personnel.-
Desperate last-minute efforts to convince the best and the
brightest of the departing staff to stay on were to no avail.
America’s SIGINT establishment would need many years
to make up for the loss of so much talent and intellectual
firepower.

The same evisceration was taking place at all of the
army’s and navy’s listening posts. By December 1945, the
army’s and navy’s radio intercept efforts had shrunk to
skeleton crews whose operational accomplishments were
deteriorating rapidly. Even more worrisome, the radio
traffic that the two U.S. COMINT organizations could
access plummeted, since most of the foreign military
communications traffic that the United States had been
listening to was shifted from radio to landlines, and the
volume of foreign diplomatic message traffic dropped
back to normal peacetime levels.-

There was now much less raw material for the few
remaining American cryptanalysts to work on, which in
turn led to a dramatic decline in the number of foreign
code and cipher systems that were being exploited. In
particular, work on South American, Balkan, and Chinese
diplomatic codes and ciphers fell off sharply because of a
lack of intercepts. Without the assistance of the British,
U.S. efforts to maintain continuity coverage of Middle
Eastern and Near Eastern communications traffic would
have collapsed. By the end of 1945, the supply of radio
intercepts had fallen to a point where code-breaking work
had almost come to a complete standstill, including the
joint Anglo-American operation code-named Bourbon,
the intercepting and decoding of Soviet communications. -

The Customers Complain

During the months after the end of the war, the U.S. Army
and Navy COMINT organizations were not producing
much in the way of useful political intelligence. Among
the few sensitive materials produced during this troubled
time were decrypted telegrams concerning foreign work
on atomic energy, such as a September 27, 1945, French
message mentioning Norwegian heavy water supplies and
a November 27, 1945, Chinese diplomatic message
concerning Russian nuclear weapons research efforts;
decrypted French foreign intelligence service message
traffic; and messages that revealed secret U.S. diplomatic

activities around the world that the British and other allies
were not meant to be privy to, such as a December 2,
1945, Chinese diplomatic message concerning the
planned construction of an American air base in Saudi
Arabia.—

Then there was the super-secret intercept program
known as Operation Gold. In May 1946, two years before
the creation of the state of Israel, the U.S. Navy COMINT
organization began intercepting the international
telephone calls and international cable traffic of Jewish
agents in the United States and elsewhere who were
engaged in raising money and buying arms for the Jewish
underground in Palestine. According to a former army
intelligence official, the Gold intercepts proved to be
highly informative. “We knew who was shipping the
arms, who was paying for them, who was being paid in
this country, every illegal thing that was going on in this
country.” But the official added, “Because of politics,
very little was ever done with [this intelligence].” —

COMINT was also producing very little meaningful
intelligence on foreign military targets. As of 1946, the
Army Security Agency (ASA) was reading the encrypted
military communications of Argentina, Czechoslovakia,
France, Romania, Spain, and Yugo slavia. Decrypts of
Soviet military traffic were notable by their absence.—

By January 1946, the quantity and quality of the
intelligence reporting coming from COMINT had fallen

to such a low level that the director of naval intelligence,
Rear Admiral Thomas Inglis, wrote that “we have been
getting disappointingly little of real value from
[communications intelligence] since VJ day.”—
Complaints from intelligence consumers about the
dearth of intelligence coming from COMINT were
rampant. For example, on December 22, 1945, former
U.S. Army chief of staff General George Marshall went to
China in a foredoomed effort to broker some sort of deal
between Chiang Kaishek and Mao Tse-tung. No useful
decrypts were available to offer any insight into the
thorny problems confronting Marshall, and only months
later did the army begin producing the first useful
translations of intercepted Chinese Nationalist and
Chinese Communist communications.—

Yet the harshest criticism coming from customers was
over the paucity of intelligence about what was going on
inside the Soviet Union. A Senior U.S. Army officer who
visited Europe in the spring of 1946 was told that it was
unlikely that Washington would get any kind of
meaningful advance warning of a Soviet attack on
Western Europe because of a near total lack of reliable
intelligence about “the main enemy.”—

The BRUSA Agreement

Thus the American COMINT establishment desperately
needed help from somewhere in order to remain a viable

intelligence provider. As it turned out, relief for the
battered U.S. COMINT community was to come from
across the Atlantic.

On March 5, 1946, former prime minister Winston
Churchill, at Truman’s invitation, delivered his famous
speech in Fulton, Missouri, in which he warned, “From
Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an Iron
Curtain has descended across the continent.” The
“informal” war time arrangements for cooperation
between American and British COMINT organizations
were formalized on the same day. At almost the exact
same time that Churchill was delivering his memorable
speech, in a heavily guarded conference room in
downtown Washington, D.C., a group of Senior American
and British intelligence officials were signing a seven-
page Top Secret intelligence- sharing agreement called the
British-United States Communication Intelligence
Agreement, which was referred to within the U.S.
intelligence community as the BRUSA Agreement. This
may be one of the most important and longest-lasting
agreements among foreign intelligence services ever
conceived. The product of six months of intense and often
acrimonious negotiations, the agreement recognized that
given the “disturbed” condition of the world, the
American and British COMINT organizations needed to
continue to work together in order to monitor the broad
array of new threats, especially the Soviet Union.—

In its final form, rather than being a blueprint for action.

BRUSA was a general statement of principles meant to
“govern the relations” of the United States, Britain, and
the British Dominions “in communication intelligence
matters only.”— Contrary to what has previously been
written about it, it was strictly a bilateral agreement
between the United States and Great Britain that
standardized the day-to-day collaboration between the
two countries’ SIGINT organizations. There was to be a
complete and free exchange of all forms of
communications intelligence “product” between the U.S.
organizations and the British cryptologic organization, the
Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).
Both the U.S. Army and Navy COMINT organizations
were required under the terms of the BRUSA Agreement
to send one copy of every finished COMINT report
(excepting those deemed to be specifically exempt from
the intelligence- sharing agreement) to GCHQ, and vice
versa. There was also a sidebar agreement between the
Americans and the British for cryptanalytic cooperation
on selected intelligence problems, such as the
continuation of the joint efforts involving Russian and
French ciphers. Other key provisions of the BRUSA
Agreement established procedures governing the two
nations’ handling, safekeeping, and exchange of
COMINT.IS

America’s other English-speaking war time SIGINT
allies — Canada, Australia, and New Zealand — ^were
referenced, but not included as signatories. BRUSA

recognized that the senations, as British Dominions,
would continue to operate under the overall direction of
the British SIGINT agency GCHQ. Were the United
States to make arrangements with the SIGINT
organizations of these countries, BRUSA required that
Britain be informed ahead of time, which in effect meant
that London had to agree to the arrangements and could
nix them at any point. It was to take eight more years and
thousands of hours of further negotiations before BRUSA
would finally morph, in 1954, into what is now known as
the United Kingdom-United States (UKUSA)
Agreement.—

The first of the Dominion countries that the United
States sought to establish bilateral SIGINT relations with
was Canada. During World War II, the U.S. Army and
Navy COMINT organizations had maintained close
relations with their Canadian counterparts, although the
level of cooperation between the two countries never
came close to approaching the intimacy that characterized
the Anglo-American COMINT relationship. After the end
of the war, U.S. and Canadian officials held some
preliminary discussions about continuing their war time
COMINT collaborative relationship. But on September 5,
1945, a twenty-six-year-old Russian cipher clerk by the
name of Igor Gouzenko walked out the door of the
Russian embassy in Ottawa and after many adventures
succeeded in defecting to Canada. Information provided
by Gouzenko helped the Royal Canadian Mounted Police

identify seventeen spies working for the Soviet military
intelligence service, the GRU, in Canada and Britain.—
The sensational revelations stemming from the Gouzenko
spy scandal — that the Russians had an agent network
inside the Canadian government — naturally made U.S.
intelligence officials extremely wary about restoring their
cryptologic relationship with the Canadians. The result
was that in October 1945 U.S. intelligence officials broke
off their talks with their Canadian counterparts, with the
head of the U.S. Navy COMINT organization. Captain
Joseph Wenger, telling his Canadian counterpart, “The
whole matter is awaiting a high policy decision so, of
course, nothing can be done until this is settled.”—

The talks resumed in mid- 1946 but essentially went
nowhere until a series of compromises were reached that
permitted the Canadian government to agree to the terms
of the C ANUS A COMINT Agreement, signed in
November 1949.—

Reaching an agreement that included the rather small
Australian SIGINT organization was complicated because
of mounting evidence emanating from the Venona
intercepts (to be discussed later in this chapter), which
strongly indicated that Soviet intelligence had spies inside
the Australian government who were feeding Moscow
highly classified documents concerning Anglo-American
defense matters. In January 1948, the U.S. government
cut off the Australian government from access to all

American classified information, and the American
COMINT organizations were specifically barred from
cooperating with their Australian counterparts in any way.
Only after a new conservative Australian government
headed by Robert Menzies was elected in December 1949
did the U.S. government relent and resume SIGINT
collaboration with Australia on a limited basis, in 1950,
after it was clear that the Soviet spies inside the
Australian government had been removed. Australia was
not admitted to BRUSA until three years later, in
September 1953. In May 1954, the BRUSA Agreement
was renamed the UKUSA Agreement so as to reflect the
addition of Australia and New Zealand as full members of
the global Anglo-American SIGINT enterprise.—

A Brief Shining Moment: The Break Into

the Soviet Ciphers

Almost immediately after the signing of the BRUSA
Agreement, the U.S. intelligence community’s knowledge
about what was transpiring inside the USSR began to
improve, as the joint Anglo-American code-breaking
enterprise — Bourbon — made dramatic progress solving a
number of Soviet cipher systems.—

The British end of Bourbon was run from a motley, drab
collection of buildings hidden behind high walls in the
nondescript London suburb of Eastcote, which was the
new home of the GCHQ. (Better quarters would later be

established in the somewhat more balmy climate of
Cheltenham.)—

The man who ran the British end of the Bourbon project
was the head of the 140-man GCHQ Russian
Cryptographic Section, Richard Pritchard.— Pritchard,
who had managed the secret British cryptanalytic attack
on Russian codes and ciphers during World War II, was
one of those rare people blessed with multiple gifts. He
had extraordinary mathematical talent and a genius for
music, and he was a natural cryptanalyst to boot. F. W.
Winterbotham, author of The Ultra Secret, described
Pritchard as “young, tall, clean-shaven, rather round of
face, with a quiet voice, could talk on any subject with
witty penetration. He, too, was deeply musical.”—

Pritchard assembled a small but remarkably talented
group of veteran code breakers to work on Bourbon, the
two most important of whom were Conel Hugh O’Donel
Alexander, an extraordinarily gifted cryptanalyst and
former British chess grand master, and Major Gerry
Morgan, a brilliant machine cryptanalyst and the head of
GCHQ’s Crypto Research Section, which contained the
best of the British cryptanalysts who had chosen to
remain on in government service after the war.—

The level of “customer satisfaction” would soon begin
to rise rapidly. In the span of only a year, teams of code
breakers on both sides of the Atlantic accomplished an
astounding series of cryptanalytic breakthroughs that, for

an all-too-brief moment in time, gave the leaders of the
United States and Great Britain unparalleled access to
what was going on inside the Soviet Union, especially
within the Russian military.

In February 1946, less than a month before the signing
of the BRUSA Agreement, ASA cryptanalysts at
Arlington Hall Station in Virginia managed to reconstruct
the inner workings of a Soviet cipher machine that they
called Sauterne, which was used on Red Army radio
networks in the Far East. On March 1, 1946, a veteran
U.S. Army cryptanalyst at Arlington Hall named Robert
Femer managed to produce the first decrypted message
from a Sauterne intercept. By the end of the month, U.S.
Navy cryptanalysts had discovered a means of
determining the daily rotor settings used to encipher all
messages on the Sauterne cipher machine, with the result
that on April 4, 1946, a regular supply of Sauterne
decrypts began to be produced.— The translations of the
Sauterne decrypts provided a window into what the
Russian army was up to in the Far East.—

At the same time that Sauterne was solved, GCHQ
began producing the first intelligence derived from its
solution of another Russian army cipher machine system,
which the British called Coleridge and which was used to
encrypt traffic on Russian army radioteletype networks in
the European half of the Soviet Union.— Alexander led
the cryptanalytic attack on Coleridge. He had returned to

code-breaking work after a brief, unhappy stint working
as a financier in London because he could notstand a job
“that involved a black jacket and striped trousers.”—
Assisting Alexander on the other side of the Atlantic was
a team of U.S. Navy code breakers led by one of the best
machine cryptanalysts in America, Francis “Frank”
Raven. A 1934 graduate of Yale University, Raven had
worked as the assistant manager of the Allegheny Ludlum
Steel Company in Pittsburgh before joining the navy
COMINT organization in 1942. An incredibly talented
cryptanalyst, during the war he had been instrumental in
solving a number of Japanese navy cipher machine
systems.— The Coleridge decrypts were found to contain
reams of administrative traffic for the Soviet military, but
when analyzed, they yielded vitally important information
about its order of battle, training activities, and logistical
matters.—

At about the same time, the Anglo-American
cryptanalysts made their first entry into a third Russian
cipher machine system, designated Longfellow. By July
1946, a copy of the Longfellow cipher machine had been
constructed by U.S. Navy cryptanalysts in Washington,
D.C., based on technical specifications provided by the
British cryptanalysts who had solved the system, but the
solution of the cipher settings used on the Longfellow
machine required several more months of work. Finally,
in February 1947 a team of British cryptanalysts led by

Gerry Morgan and a team of U.S. Navy analysts in
Washington, headed by Commander Howard Campaigne,
together solved the encryption system used by the Soviet
army’s Longfellow cipher machine system.—

But the value of the decrypts of Longfellow traffic that
were just beginning to be produced in the spring of 1947
was eclipsed by the ever-rising volume of translations
being produced across the Atlantic at GCHQ through the
exploitation of the Coleridge cipher machine. These
decrypts proved to be so valuable that, according to a
report by the U.S. Navy liaison officer assigned to
GCHQ, Coleridge was “the most important, high-level
system from which current intelligence may be produced
and is so in fact regarded here.”—

The net result was that by the spring of 1947,
translations of decrypted messages from all three systems
were being produced in quantity. At Arlington Hall, the
ASA cryptanalysts alone were churning out 341 decrypts
a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, most of which
were derived from Russian radio intercepts. — By early
1949, more than 12,500 translations of decrypted Russian
army radio messages had been published by ASA and
sent to intelligence consumers in Washington.—

The Anglo-American cryptanalysts were also
experiencing considerable success in solving the cipher
systems used by the Soviet navy. By early 1947, a number
of Russian navy ciphers used in the Far East had been

successfully solved, largely because the two Russian
fleets operating in the Pacific were forced by geography
to use radio to communicate with Moscow instead of
secure teletype landlines. This allowed U.S. Navy
listening posts in the Far East to easily intercept the radio
traffic sent between these headquarters and Moscow.
There was also some success in reading the cipher
systems used by the Soviet fleets in the Baltic Sea, as well
as the ciphers used by the Black Sea fleet and the Caspian
Sea flotilla. By February 1949, U.S. Navy cryptanalysts
had produced more than twenty-one thousand decrypts of
Soviet naval message traffic, which was almost double
the number of decrypts of Russian army traffic produced
by ASA.22

A number of the Soviet air force’s operational ciphers
were also quickly solved. In 1947, ASA cryptanalysts
solved one of the operational cipher systems used by the
Soviet air force headquarters in Moscow to communicate
with its subordinate commands throughout the Soviet
Union and Eastern Europe, as well as several variants of
this system.— In the Far East, U.S. Army cryptanalysts in
Japan were reading the encrypted radio traffic of the
Soviet Ninth Air Army at Ussurijsk/Vozdvizhenka and
the Tenth Air Army at Khabarovsk.—

In room 2409 at Arlington Hall, a brilliant thirty-four-
year-old former Japanese linguist and cryptanalyst named
Meredith Knox Gardner was making spectacular progress

solving the ciphers that had been used during World War
II by the Soviet civilian intelligence service (its military
counterpart was the GRU), then called the NKGB, to
communicate with its rezidenturasm the United States. In
later years, this work would be part of Venona program.
In December 1946, Gardner solved part of a 1944 NKGB
message that gave the names of some of the more
prominent American scientists working on the Manhattan
Project, the American war time atomic bomb program.
The decrypt was deemed so important that army chief of
staff Omar Bradley was personally briefed on the contents
of the message. Five months later, in May 1947, Gardner
solved part of a message sent from the NKGB’s New
York rezidenturaon December 13, 1944, which showed
that an agent within the U.S. Army General Staff in
Washington had provided the Soviets with highly
classified military information. Unfortunately, Gardner
was not able to deduce anything further as to the agent’s
true identity from the fragmentary decrypt. By August
1947, new decrypts provided the first evidence that an
extensive Soviet spy ring was operating in Australia
during World War II, which set off alarm bells in both
Washington and London. Gardner was able to report that
the decrypts contained the cryptonyms of dozens, perhaps
hundreds, of Soviet agents operating in the United States,
Australia, and Sweden during the war. But the report also
clearly showed that Gardner had only made partial
headway into the Soviet codebook, and that the results of

his work were still very fragmentary.—

Taken together, these decrypts opened up a wide array
of Soviet military and civilian targets for exploitation by
the information- starved intelligence analysts in both
Washington and London. An NS A historical monograph
notes, “ASA in the post-World War II period had broken
messages used by the Soviet armed forces, police and
industry, and was building a remarkably complete picture
of the Soviet national security posture.”— This is
confirmed by material obtained by researchers from the
former KGB archives in Moscow, which reveals that the
Anglo-American COMINT organizations were deriving
from these decrypts a great deal of valuable intelligence
about the strength and capabilities of the Soviet armed
forces, the production capacity of various branches of
Soviet industry, and even the super-secret work that the
Soviets were conducting in the field of atomic energy.—
Former NS A officials have stated in interviews that the
first postwar crisis in which COMINT played an
important role was the 1948 Berlin Crisis.— Ultimately, it
was COMINT that showed that the Soviets had no
intention of launching an attack on West Berlin or West
Germany. The initial stage of the Berlin Crisis was
actually a Russian feint.— COMINT also provided
valuable data during the second part of the crisis, when on
June 26, 1948, the Soviet’s cut off all access to West
Berlin, forcing the United States and Britain to begin a

massive airlift to keep West Berlin supplied with
foodstuffs and coal for heating. Careful monitoring of
Soviet communications indicated that the Russians would
not interfere with the airlift.—

Black Friday

During President Truman’s October 1948 nationwide
whistle- stop train tour in his uphill battle for reelection
against Governor Thomas Dewey, the U.S. government
was at a virtual standstill. On the afternoon of Friday,
October 29, just as Truman was preparing to deliver a
fiery campaign speech at the Brooklyn Academy of Music
in New York City, the Russian government and military
executed a massive change of virtually all of their cipher
systems. On that day, referred to within NS A as Black
Friday, and continuing for several months thereafter, all
of the cipher systems used on Soviet military and internal-
security radio networks, including all mainline Soviet
military, naval, and police radio nets, were changed to
new, unbreakable systems. The Russians also changed all
their radio call signs and operating frequencies and
replaced all of the cipher machines that the Americans
and British had solved, and even some they hadn’t, with
newer and more sophisticated cipher machines that were
to defy the ability of American and British cryptanalysts
to solve them for almost thirty years, until the tenure of
Admiral Bobby Ray Inman in the late 1970s.—

Black Friday was an unmitigated disaster, inflicting
massive and irreparable damage on the Anglo-American
SIGINT organizations’ efforts against the USSR, killing
off virtually all of the productive intelligence sources that
were then available to them regarding what was going on
inside the Soviet Union and rendering useless most of
four years’ hard work by thousands of American and
British cryptanalysts, linguists, and traffic analysts. The
loss of so many critically important high-level intelligence
sources in such a short space of time was, as NS A
historians have aptly described it, “perhaps the most
significant intelligence loss in U.S. history.” And more
important, it marked the beginning of an eight-year period
when reliable intelligence about what was occurring
inside the USSR was practically non existent.—

The sudden loss of so many productive intelligence
sources was not the only damage that can be directly
attributed to the Black Friday blackout. In the months that
followed, the Anglo-American code breakers discovered
that they now faced two new and seemingly
insurmountable obstacles that threatened to keep them
deaf, dumb, and blind for years. First, there was far less
high-level Soviet government and military radio traffic
than prior to Black Friday because the Russians had
switched much of their military communication to
telegraph lines or buried cables, which was a simple and
effective way of keeping this traffic away from the
American and British radio intercept operators. Moreover,

the high-level Russian radio traffic that could still be
intercepted was proving to be nearly impossible to crack
because of the new cipher machines and unbreakable
cipher systems that were introduced on all key radio
circuits. The Russians also implemented tough
communications security practices and procedures and
draconian rules and regulations governing the encryption
of radio communications traffic, and radio security
discipline was suddenly rigorously and ruthlessly
enforced. Facing potential death sentences for failing to
comply with the new regulations, Russian radio operators
suddenly began making fewer mistakes in the encoding
and decoding of messages, and operator chatter
disappeared almost completely from the airwaves. It was
also at about this time that the Russian military and key
Soviet government ministries began encrypting their
telephone calls using a newly developed voice- scrambling
device called Vhe Che (“High Frequency”), which further
degraded the ability of the Anglo-American SIGINT
personnel to access even low-level Soviet
communications. It would eventually be discovered that
the Russians had made their massive shift because
William Weisband, a forty-year-old Russian linguist with
ASA, had told the KGB everything that he knew about
ASA’s Russian code-breaking efforts at Arlington Hall.
(For reasons of security, Weisband was not put on trial for
espionage.)

Decades later, at a Central Intelligence Agency

conference on Venona, Meredith Gardner, an intensely
private and taciturn man, did not vent his feelings about
Weisband, even though he had done grave damage to
Gardner’s work on Venona. But Gardner’s boss, Frank
Rowlett, was not so shy in an interview before his death,
calling Weisband “the traitor that got away.”—

Unfortunately, internecine warfare within the upper
echelons of the U.S. intelligence community at the time
got in the way of putting stronger security safeguards into
effect — despite the damage that a middle-level employee
like Weisband had done to America’s SIGINT effort.
Four years later, a 1952 review found that “very little had
been done” to implement the 1948 recommendations for
strengthening security practices within the U.S.
cryptologic community.—

The Creation of the Armed Forces Security

Agency

At the same time that the U.S. and British intelligence
communities were reeling from Black Friday, several new
institutional actors shoved their way into the battered U.S.
cryptologic community. On October 20, 1948, the newly
in dependent U.S. Air Force formally activated its own
COMINT collection organization, the U.S. Air Force
Security Service (USAFSS).— It immediately became
responsible for COMINT coverage of the entire Soviet air
force and air defense system, including the strategic

bombers of the Soviet Long Range Air Force. But the
ability of USAFSS to perform this vital mission was
practically non existent at the time owing to a severe
shortage of manpower and equipment, largely because the
U.S. Air Force headquarters staff in Washington was slow
to provide the necessary resources that the COMINT
organization so desperately needed. As a result, by the
end of 1949, USAFSS was only operating thirty- five
COMINT intercept positions in the U.S. and overseas,
which was far short of what was expected of it. By
December 1949, the situation was so serious that the chief
of USAF Intelligence was forced to report that USAFSS ’s
COMINT capability was “presently negligible and will
continue to be negligible for an unwarranted period of
time unless immediate steps are taken to change the
present low priority on equipment and personnel assigned
to the Air Force Security Services.”—

Seven months later, on May 20, 1949, Secretary of
Defense Louis Johnson issued a Top Secret directive
creating the Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA),
which was given the responsibility for the direction and
control of all U.S. communications intelligence and
communications security activities exceptior tactical
cryptologic activities, which remained under the control
of the army, navy, and air force.—

AFSA was a fatally flawed organization from its
inception. Its funding was grossly inadequate when
compared with the significantly higher level of funding

given to the CIA, which had been created two years
earlier in 1947.— The military services then
systematically stripped AFSA of virtually all of the
authority that it had originally been granted. As a result,
by the summer of 1950, AFSA found itself powerless and
completely dependent on the military for all of its money,
radio intercept facilities, personnel, equipment,
communications, and logistical support.— Then, taking
full advantage of AFSA’s weakened state, the military
services got key portions of their COMINT missions
exempted from its authority. With no means of
compelling the other services to comply, including no
control over the budgets of the three military SIGINT
units, AFSA was forced to humble itself and negotiate on
bent-knee agreements with the services that gave even
more power away to them.—

It is clear now that many of AFSA’s problems can be
traced directly to its first director. Rear Admiral Earl
Stone, who did not possess the combative personality
desperately needed to force the branches of the military to
cooperate in order to make AFSA work. By the time he
left office in July 1951, a standing joke among his
subordinates was that Stone’s authority extended only as
far as the front door of his office, and even that was
subject to debate.— Looking back on Stone’s sad two-year
tenure as director of AFSA, one of his senior deputies.
Captain Wesley Wright, said that the decision to give the

job to Stone in the first place “was a horrible thing to

do.”52

Jack Gurin ’s War

Declassified documents make clear that AFSA’s legion of
internal management woes, although serious, were the
least of its problems. From the moment it was born,
AFSA inherited, as a declassified NS A history puts it, “a
Soviet problem that was in miserable shape.”—

AFSA had only one source of intelligence left that
offered any insight into what was going on inside the
Soviet Union: intercepts of low-level, unencrypted Soviet
administrative radio traffic and commercial tele grams,
which were generally referred to as “plaintext” within the
Anglo-American intelligence communities. A declassified
NS A historical report notes, “Out of this devastation,
Russian plaintext communications emerged as the
principal source of intelligence on our primary Cold War
adversary.”— Outside of plaintext, the only other source
for information on what was going on behind the iron
curtain came from Traffic Analysis, where analysts
studied the now-unreadable intercepts to try to derive
intelligence from the message “externals.”

Plaintext intercepts had been ignored as an intelligence
source since the end of World War II; after Black Friday,
everything changed. Since high-level Russian
communications traffic could no longer be read, the

previously deprecated Russian plaintext intercepts being
processed in Arlington Hall’s room 1501-B suddenly
became of critical importance for U.S. SIGINT.
Overnight, the twenty- seven-year-old chief of the AFSA
plaintext unit, Jacob “Jack” Gurin, became a leading
figure within the U.S. intelligence community.— Now the
world was beating a path to his door.

The Blackout Curtain

In addition to focusing on plain text intercepts, the other
principal problem that the newly created AFSA had to
confront was how to revamp itself and at the same time
try to repair the damage caused by the Black Friday
blackout. The U.S. Communications Intelligence Board
quickly conducted a study, which determined that an
additional 160 intercept positions and 650 intercept
operators were needed just to meet minimum coverage
requirements. The study also found that “currently
allowed personnel are not sufficient for these and other
important tasks.”—

The question became, how should the scarce COMINT
collection resources available be reallocated? In early
1949, the U.S. Army and Navy COMINT organizations
began systematically diverting personnel and equipment
resources away from non- Soviet targets in order to
strengthen the Soviet COMINT effort. By the summer of
1949, 71 percent of all American radio intercept personnel

and 60 percent of all COMINT processing personnel were
working on the “Soviet problem” — at the expense of
coverage of other countries, including AFSA’s targets in
the Far East, most significantly mainland China.
Declassified documents show that the number of AFSA
analysts and linguists assigned to Asian problems had
declined from 261 to 112 personnel by the end of 1949.
Work on all other nations in the Far East was either
abandoned completely or drastically reduced.—

Also in early 1949, personnel were pulled from
unproductive Soviet cryptanalytic projects and put to
work instead on translating and analyzing the ever-
mounting volume of Soviet plaintext teletype intercepts,
which overnight had become AFSA’s most important
intelligence source. There were dire consequences
resulting from the shift to plaintext, however. The
reassignment of those working on Soviet cryptanalytic
problems to plaintext processing badly hurt the American
cryptanalytic effort to solve Soviet ciphers and indirectly
contributed to the departure of a number of highly
talented cryptanalysts. By 1952, there were only ten to
fifteen qualified cryptanalysts left at AFSA, down from
forty to fifty at the height of World War IT—

One Soviet-related cryptanalytic effort after another
ground to a halt for lack of attention or resources. For
instance, the Anglo-American COMINT organizations
largely gave up on their efforts to solve encrypted Soviet
diplomatic and military attache traffic. These cipher

systems, almost all of which were encrypted with
unbreakable one-time pad ciphers, had defied the best
efforts of the American and British cryptanalysts since
1945. As of August 1948, the principal Soviet diplomatic
cipher systems had not been solved, and available
information indicates that they never were.— The ciphers
used on the Ministry of State Security (MGB) high-level
internal security communications networks also
consistently stymied the American and British
cryptanalysts.—

With their access to Soviet high-level cipher systems
irretrievably lost, SIGINT production on the USSR fell
precipitously, and notable successes became few and far
between. But it was during this bleak period that the most
important retrospective breaks into the Venona ciphers
were made. Between December 1948 and June 1950,
Meredith Gardner decrypted portions of dozens of Soviet
intelligence messages, which helped the Federal Bureau
of Investigation identify Judith Coplon, Klaus Fuchs,
Donald MacLean, David Greenglass, Julius Rosenberg,
and the physicist Theodore Alvin Hall, among others, as
having spied for the Soviet Union during World War IT—
However, Venona, as noted earlier, sadly turned out to be
an intelligence asset that could not be used. While it is
certainly true that the Venona decrypts allowed the FBI
and its counterparts in En gland and Australia to identify a
large number of Soviet spies during the late 1940s and the

1950s, they did not produce many criminal indictments
and convictions. Declassified FBI documents show that
only 15 of the 206 Soviet agents identified in the Venona
decrypts were ever prosecuted, in large part because the
secrecy of these decrypts prevented them from being used
in an American court of law.—

As a result, most of the “big fish” who spied for the
Russians got away. For example, although her complicity
in spying for the Soviet Union was proved by Venona
decrypts, all of Coplon’s criminal convictions were
overturned on appeal because of mistakes made by the
FBI and also because the SIGINT materials could not be
used in court. Forty individuals identified in Venona as
having spied for Russia fled before they could be
prosecuted, including MacLean, Guy Burgess, and Kim
Philby. But most of the agents who spied for Russia were
never indicted because it might have revealed U.S.
success in breaking Russian codes. For example, when in
1956 the FBI proposed prosecuting former White House
aide Lauchlin Currie for espionage based on information
developed from Venona, NSA’s director. Lieutenant
General Ralph Canine, strongly objected, telling the
Justice Department that anything that might reveal NSA’s
success in breaking Russian codes would be “highly
inadvisable.”—

For the same reason, even the man whose treachery
probably led to the Black Friday disaster, William
Weisband, could be convicted only of contempt of court

in 1950 for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury
after the director of AFSA, Rear Admiral Earl Stone,
refused to sanction a criminal indictment for espionage.
Weisband worked for the rest of his life as an insurance
salesman in northern Virginia and died of a heart attack in
May 1967 at the age of fifty-nine.—

The State of Ameriean COMINT in June

1950

As of June 1950, AFSA and the three military cryptologic
organizations were in a lamentable state. They were short
of money, personnel, and equipment. Neither AFSA nor
Britain’s GCHQ were reading any Soviet or Chinese
high-level code or cipher systems.— AFSA was deriving
intelligence from low-level plaintext intercepts, and even
that effort was not doing very well. As a result, high-
quality intelligence about what was going on inside the
USSR was minimal. A CIA history reveals that COMINT
was only producing high-quality intelligence about Soviet
foreign trade, internal consumer goods policies, gold
production, petroleum shipments, shipbuilding activities,
military and civilian aircraft production, and civil
defense.— Not surprisingly, intelligence consumers were
concerned that AFSA was not carrying out its mission,
and a consensus began to emerge within the U.S.
intelligence community that radical changes were
probably needed in order to get it back on track.—

But perhaps the most prescient judgment on the state of
American COMINT in 1950 comes from an NSA
historian, who writes, “American cryptology was really
just a hollow shell of its former self by 1950 . . . With
slim budgets, lack of people, and lack of legal authorities,
[AFSA] appeared set up for failure should a conflict break
out.”— And that is exactly what happened on June 25,
1950, in a country that Secretary of State Dean Acheson
in a colossal gaffe had neglected to include in the U.S.
“Asian defense perimeter” — Korea.—

CHAPTER 2

The Storm Breaks

SIGINT and the Korean War: 1950-1951

The hammer shatters glass, but forges steel.

^RUSSIAN PROVERB

The Shattered Frontier

At four A.M. on the morning of Sunday, June 25, 1950,
over seven hundred Russian-made artillery pieces and
mortars of the North Korean army opened fire on the
defensive positions of the South Korean army deployed
along the 38th parallel, which since the end of World War
II had served as the demarcation line between communist
North Korea and the fledgling democracy of South Korea.
The impact of thousands of artillery shells landing in just
thirty minutes shattered the morale of the green Republic
of Korea (ROK) forces. Two hours later, over one
hundred thousand combat- tested North Korean troops
backed by more than 180 Russian-made T-34 medium
tanks and self-propelled artillery guns surged across the
38th parallel. Within a matter of hours, the North Koreans

had routed all but a few of the undermanned and poorly
equipped South Korean army units along the border. The
Korean War had begun.-

Why hadn’t AFSA or any of the three service
cryptologic agencies provided advance warning? The
answer revealed by newly declassified documents is that
there had been no COMINT coverage whatsoever of
North Korea prior to the invasion. An NS A historical
monograph admits that “the North Korean target was
ignored.”- The reason was that virtually all of AFSA’s
meager collection resources were focused on its
customers’ primary target, the Soviet Union. Virtually all
other target countries were being ignored or given short
shrift by AFSA. The result, according to Colonel Morton
Rubin, a former Army G-2 official, was that: “North
Korea got lost in the shuffle and nobody told us that they
were interested in what was going on north of the 38th
parallel.” -

This meant AFSA’s capabilities against North Korea
were nonexistent. Nobody at AFSA was working on
North Korean codes and ciphers. The AFSA Korean
Section existed only on paper; the two civilians on its
nominal staff were actually assigned to the Chinese
Section and tasked with working on the codes and ciphers
of both North and South Korea only in their limited spare
time. Neither one had any degree of expertise on the
North Korean military. In addition, the AFSA Korean

Section possessed no Korean dictionaries or Korean-
language reference books; no North Korean traffic
analytic aids; no Korean-language typewriters, necessary
for transcribing intercepts; and virtually no knowledge of
North Korean military terminology and radio working
procedures because there had not been any serious
intercept coverage of North Korea since 1946.-

The Thirty-Day Miracle

On June 28, 1950, three days after the invasion began, the
South Korean capital of Seoul fell to the North Koreans
without a fight. Over the next month, the news from
Korea became increasingly grim. Every day the American
troops in Korea lost more ground against the numerically
superior and better equipped North Korean forces. On
July 3, the port of Inchon fell, followed by the key
railroad junction at Suwon on July 4. On July 20, the
North Koreans captured the city of Taejon, wiping out an
entire American infantry regiment. Five days later, on
July 25, the North Koreans destroyed a regiment of the
First Cavalry Division that was trying to defend the
Korean towns of Kumch’on and Yongdong.

But what the public did not know was that only a few
days after the North Korean invasion began, the intercept
operators at the U.S. Army listening post outside the city
of Kyoto, Japan, began intercepting North Korean
military Morse code radio traffic coming from their forces

inside South Korea. On the morning of June 29, 1950, the
first intercepted North Korean radio traffic from Kyoto
began arriving at AFSA’s SIGINT processing center at
Arlington Hall Station over the teletype links from the Far
East. Because there were so few Korean linguists
available, it took AFSA a week before the first translated
North Korean message was completed on July 3, the same
day that the port of Inchon fell to the North Koreans. A
quick scan of the intercepts revealed that the North
Korean army was transmitting highly classified
information, such as daily situation reports, battle plans,
and troop movement orders, in the clear. The analysts
were amazed that the North Koreans were not bothering
to encode this incredibly valuable material.- It took
another week before the first Top Secret Codeword traffic
analysis report based on intercepts of NKPA plaintext
radio traffic was published and distributed by AFSA to its
consumers in Washington and the Far East on July 11,
just two weeks after the North Korean invasion began.
Three days later, on July 14, AFSA cryptanalysts at
Arlington Hall broke the first encrypted North Korean
military radio message. In the days that followed, the
AFSA cryptanalysts solved several more cipher systems
then being used by the North Korean combat divisions
and their subordinate regiments, as well as some of the
cipher systems used by North Korean logistics units.-
The upshot was that in a mere thirty days, AFSA’s
cryptanalysts had achieved the cryptologic equivalent of a

miracle — they had succeeded in breaking virtually all of
the North Korean military’s tactical codes and ciphers,
which must rank as one of the most important code-
breaking accomplishments of the twentieth century. The
result was that by the end of July 1950, AFSA was
solving and translating over one third of all intercepted
North Korean enciphered messages that were being
intercepted. Only a severe shortage of Korean linguists
kept them from producing more.-
The net result was that AFSA’s spectacular code-
breaking successes gave the commander of the Eighth
U.S. Army in Korea, Lieutenant General Walton Walker,
what every military commander around the world secretly
dreams about — near complete and real-time access to the
plans and intentions of the enemy forces he faced. James
H. Polk, who was a senior intelligence officer on General
MacArthur’s G-2 staff in Tokyo at the time, recalled, “We
had the North Korean codes down pat. We knew
everything they were going to do, usually before they got
the orders from Pyongyang decoded themselves. You
can’t ask for more than that.” A young army field
commander attached to Eighth U.S. Army headquarters at
Taegu named James K. Woolnough, who would later rise
to the rank of general, had this to say about the
importance of the SIGINT available to General Walker:
“They had, of course, perfect intelligence. It all funneled
in right there. They knew exactly where each platoon of
North Koreans were going, and they’d move to meet it . . .

That was amazing, utterly amazing.

These code-breaking successes were to prove to be
literally lifesaving over the forty-five days that followed
as the vastly outnumbered American and South Korean
infantrymen of the Eighth U.S. Army tried desperately to
hold on to a tiny slice of South Korea around the port city
of Pusan in a series of battles that are referred to today
collectively as the Battle of the Pusan Perimeter.
Declassified documents reveal that between August 1 and
September 15, 1950, SIGINT was instrumental in helping
General Walker’s Eighth Army beat back a half-dozen
North Korean attacks against the Pusan Perimeter.- By the
end of August, SIGINT revealed that the North Korean
army had been reduced to a shadow of its former self The
North Korean Thirteenth Division could only muster a
thousand men for combat, while some battalions of the
North Korean Fifth Division had lost more than 80
percent of their troops, with one battalion reporting that it
had only ten soldiers left on its muster rolls.— SIGINT
also showed that under relentless air attacks, the North
Korean supply system had almost completely stopped
functioning. Ammunition shortages were so severe that it
was severely affecting the combat capabilities of virtually
all frontline NKPA units deployed around the Pusan
Perimeter. For example, an intercept revealed that
ammunition shortages in the North Korean Thirteenth
Division east of Taegu were so severe that it could not fire

its few remaining artillery pieces.—

The Inchon Landing

In one of the greatest gambles of the Korean War, on the
morning of September 15, 1950, units of the U.S. Tenth
Corps staged an amphibious landing, planned by General
Mac Arthur, behind the North Korean lines at the port of
Inchon, west of Seoul.

Recently declassified documents reveal that the Inchon
landing would not have been successful without the
SIGINT coming out of AFSA. Thanks to SIGINT,
Mac Arthur and his intelligence chief. Major General
Charles Willoughby, had a fairly clear picture of the
North Korean army order of battle, including the
locations, strengths, and equipment levels for all thirteen
infantry divisions and a single armored division deployed
around the Pusan Perimeter. Most important, the SIGINT
data showed that there were no large North Korean units
deployed in the Inchon area.— In the month prior to the
Inchon landing, MacArthur’s intelligence analysts in
Tokyo, thanks to the decrypts, were able to track the
locations and movements of virtually every unit in the
North Korean army. In mid- August, SIGINT revealed that
the North Koreans were taking frontline combat units
from the Pusan Perimeter and moving them to defensive
positions along both the east and west coasts of South
Korea, suggesting that the North Korean general staff was

concerned about the possibility of a U.N. amphibious
landing behind North Korean lines. By early September,
decrypted high-level North Korean communications
traffic showed that the North Korean army’s senior
commanders were concerned that the United States might
attempt an amphibious landing on the west coast of South
Korea, but had incorrectly guessed that the landing would
most likely occur to the south of Inchon at either Mokpo
or Kunsan port.—

Despite SIGINT indications that the North Koreans
knew a U.S. amphibious operation was imminent,
MacArthur went ahead with the landing at Inchon on
September 15. It was a stunning success, with little North
Korean resistance. The sole attempt by the North Koreans
to mount a major counterattack against the Inchon
bridgehead was picked up by SIGINT well before it
began, and mauled by repeated air strikes. In a matter of
just a few hours, the entire North Korean force was
destroyed.—

With the collapse of the Inchon counterattack, there
were no more organized North Korean forces standing
between the U.S. forces and Seoul. On September 28,
Seoul fell to the Americans. With that, all thirteen North
Korean combat divisions around the Pusan Perimeter
abandoned their positions and fled to the north. By the
end of the month, all of the rest of South Korea up to the
old demarcation line at the 38th parallel had been
recaptured.

The Chinese Intervention

Newly declassified documents have revealed that at the
time of the Inchon landing, AFSA had very few SIGINT
resources dedicated to monitoring what was occurring
inside the People’s Republic of China, North Korea’s
huge communist neighbor, because, as a declassified NS A
history put it, AFSA had “employed all available
resources against the Soviet target.” The only SIGINT
resources available were a few intercept positions at the
U.S. Army listening post on the island of Okinawa, Japan,
which were monitoring low-level Chinese civil
communications traffic, primarily unencrypted Chinese
government cables and the communications traffic of the
Chinese Railroad Ministry. A small team of Chinese
linguists at Arlington Hall Station, headed by a twenty-
nine-year-old New Yorker named Milton Zaslow, was
able to derive a modicum of intelligence about the state of
the Chinese economy, transportation and logistics issues,
and even the movements of Chinese military units inside
China from these telegrams. It was not a very impressive
effort, but it was all that the overstretched AFSA could
afford at the time.—

Beginning in July 1950, and continuing through the fall,
Zaslow’ s team picked up indications in these low-level
intercepts that the Chinese were shifting hundreds of
thousands of combat troops from southern and central

China to Manchuria by rail.— But according to Cynthia
Grabo, then an intelligence analyst at the Pentagon, the
U.S. Army’s intelligence analysts refused to accept the
reports of a Chinese military buildup in Manchuria,
arguing instead that the Chinese intended to invade
Taiwan.—

But there were other SIGINT sources that were
indicating that China intended to take forceful action in
Korea. AFSA’s principal source for intelligence on China
was its ability to read the cable traffic of arguably the best
informed foreign diplomat based in Beijing, Dr. Kavalam
Madhava Panikkar (sometimes spelled Pannikar), India’s
ambassador to China. Panikkar had the ear of Premier
Chou Enlai and other senior Chinese leaders, which made
him AFSA’s best source for high-level diplomatic
intelligence about what was going on in Beijing.— For
example, intercepts of Panikkar’ s cables to New Delhi in
July and August 1950 revealed that he had been told by
Chou Enlai that the Chinese would ^orintervene militarily
in Korea.—

But diplomatic decrypts revealed that the position of the
Chinese leadership changed dramatically following the
amphibious landing at Inchon. The decrypted cables of
the Burmese ambassador in Beijing, whose government
also maintained generally friendly relations with China,
warned that China now intended to become involved
militarily in Korea.— A week later, decrypts of

Ambassador Panikkar’s cable traffic to New Delhi
revealed that on September 25, Chou En-lai had warned
the Indian ambassador that China would intervene
militarily in Korea if U.N. forces crossed the 38th
parallel.— But Panikkar’s reporting was either discounted
or ignored completely by policymakers in Washington
because of his alleged pro-Chinese leanings.—

But the Chinese were not bluffing. On October 1, South
Korean troops crossed the 38th parallel and marched into
North Korea. The next day, the Chinese Communist
Party’s Politburo decided to intervene militarily in the
Korean War, with Mao Tse-tung ordering 260,000
Chinese troops to begin crossing the Yalu River on
October 15.—

The Chinese leadership in Beijing made one last final
effort to head off war with the U.S. Shortly after midnight
on the morning of October 3, 1950, Chou En-lai called in
Ambassador Panikkar and told him that if U.S. troops
crossed the 38th parallel, China would send its forces
across the Yalu River to defend North Korea. On the
same day, the Dutch charge d’affaires in Beijing cabled
his foreign ministry in the Hague quoting Chou En-lai to
the effect that China would fight if U.N. forces crossed
the 38th parallel.— But Washington refused to pay heed to
these warnings, which were dismissed in their entirety as
being nothing more than a bluff. On October 5, the first
American combat troops were ordered to cross the 38th

parallel and advance on the North Korean capital of
Pyongyang. By this singular act, General MacArthur
committed U.S. and U.N. forces to a course of action that
was to have dire consequences for everyone involved.—
On the morning of October 15, Mao sent a cable to his
military commander in Manchuria, General Peng Dehuai,
ordering him to send the first Chinese army units across
the Yalu River into North Korea. On the night of October
15-16, the 372nd Regiment of the Chinese 42nd Army
secretly crossed the Yalu. The die had been cast. China
had entered the Korean War.—

Declassified documents confirm that AFSA failed to
detect the movement of the more than three hundred
thousand Chinese soldiers into Korea, largely because the
Chinese forces operated in complete radio silence.— But
SIGINT did pick up a number of changes in Soviet,
Chinese, and North Korean military activities indicating
that something significant was happening across the
border in Manchuria. On October 20, the CIA sent
President Truman a Top Secret Codeword memo (which
the CIA has steadfastly refused to fully declassify)
revealing that SIGINT and other intelligence sources
indicated that the Chinese intended to intervene militarily
in the Korean War to protect their interests in the Suiho
hydroelectric complex in North Korea. According to the
report, SIGINT “noted the presence of an unusually large
number of fighter aircraft in Manchuria.”— The next day.

October 21, AFSA reported that intercepts of Chinese
radio traffic showed that during the first three weeks of
October, three Chinese armies had been deployed to
positions along the Yalu River. Also on October 21,
AFSA reported that during the previous week, twenty
troop trains carrying Chinese combat troops had been sent

from Shanghai to Manchuria and more were on their

29

way.—

Sadly, all of this intelligence data was again ignored or
discounted because it ran contrary to the prevailing
wisdom of the U.S. intelligence community. For example,
the October 18, 1950, edition of the CIA’s Review of the
World SituatiomidiiQd, “Unless the USSR is ready to
precipitate global war, or unless for some reason that
Peiping leaders do not think that war with the U.S. would
result from open intervention in Korea, the odds are that
Communist China, like the USSR, will not openly
intervene in North Korea.”— In Tokyo, MacArthur chose
to ignore the SIGINT. One of MacArthur’ s senior
intelligence officers. Lieutenant Colonel Morton Rubin,
remembered personally briefing the general and his
intelligence chief. General Charles Willoughby, on the
Chinese troop movements appearing in SIGINT, but the
intelligence reports apparently did not convince either
man that the Chinese threat was real. Lieutenant General
Matthew Ridgway, who later was to replace MacArthur
as commander of U.S. forces in the Far East, recalled that
“the great fault over there was poor evaluation of the

intelligence that was obtained. They knew the facts, but
they were poorly evaluated. I don’t know just why that
was. It was probably in good part because of Mac Arthur’s
personality. If he did not want to believe something, he
wouldn’t.”—

The result was that when the Chinese launched their
first offensive in Korea, it achieved complete surprise.
Striking without warning, between October 25 and
November 2, 1950, three PLA armies decimated the entire
South Korean 2nd Corps and a regiment of the U.S. 1st
Cavalry Division near the North Korean town of Unsan.
The Chinese troops then quietly withdrew back into the
hills to prepare for the next phase of their offensive.—

After the Unsan fiasco, the entire U.S. intelligence
community went into a state of denial, refusing to accept
the fact that the Chinese military was in Korea. In
Washington, the CIA’s intelligence analysts concluded,
“There has been no definitive evidence of Soviet or
Chinese intervention in Korea.” On October 30, the CIA’s
Daily Summaryo^'mQd that “the presence of Chinese
Communist units in Korea has not been confirmed. CIA
continues to believe that direct Chinese Communist
intervention in Korea is unlikely at this time.” In Korea,
the Eighth Army reported that despite the fact they held
seven Chinese POWs, they were “not inclined to accept
reports of substantial Chinese participation in North
Korean fighting.”—

What is curious is that all the assessments coming out of
the intelligence staffs in Washington and Tokyo were
directly contradicted by what the chatty Chinese POWs
captured at Unsan were telling their interrogators, which
was that whole Chinese combat divisions were then
operating inside Korea.— When CIA officers in Korea
had the temerity to cable Washington with the results of
the interrogations of the Chinese prisoners, Willoughby
barred CIA personnel from further access to the POW
cages, telling the Eighth Army’s intelligence chief to
“Keep him [the CIA station chief in Korea] clear of inter
rogation.” It was the prototypical case of shooting the
messenger.—

In the weeks that followed, an increased volume of
disquieting intelligence came out of AFSA indicating that
the Chinese military was preparing to attack. In early
November, AFSA reported that the Chinese had just
moved three more armies by rail to Manchuria, and that
the security forces guarding Beijing had just been placed
on a state of alert.— On November 24, the CIA issued a
report based on COMINT, which revealed that an
additional one hundred thousand Chinese troops had just
arrived in Manchuria and that the Chinese were shipping
thirty thousand maps of North Korea to its forces in
Manchuria.— AFSA also produced intelligence indicating
that MacArthur was looking for a fight with the Chinese.
On November 11, Army chief of staff J. Fawton Collins

sent a Top Secret Codeword “Eyes Only” message to
MacArthur containing the text of a decrypted message
from the Brazilian ambassador in Tokyo, Gastao P. Do
Rio Branco, to his home office in Rio de Janeiro.
According to the decrypt: “Speaking with . . . frankness,
he [MacArthur] told the President that it would be better
to face a war now than two or three years hence, for he
was certain that there was not the least possibility of an
understanding with the men in the Kremlin, as the
experience of the last five years has proved. He felt,
therefore, that in order to attain peace it is necessary to
destroy the focus of international bolshevism in
Moscow.”—

The general got his wish. At 8:00 p.m. on the night of
November 25, 1950, the Chinese army struck once again,
this time with even greater force, decimating the
combined U.S. and South Korean forces stretched out
along the Yalu River, sending the allied forces reeling
backward in retreat. The final word appropriately goes to
MacArthur, who sent a panicky Top Secret cable to
Washington on November 28 including the now-famous
line: “We face an entirely new war.”—

World War III Cometh

On the night of November 30, General Walker’s Eighth
U.S. Army broke contact with the Chinese People’s
Liberation Army (PEA) forces along the Yalu River and

began a two-week-long, 120-mile retreat south to the
Imjin River, north of Seoul. During this critically
important two-week period, there was no contact
whatsoever between the Eighth Army and the pursuing
Chinese forces, which resulted in the entire U.S.
intelligence community being left almost completely in
the dark concerning the PL A forces.

Declassified documents show that during the Eighth
Army’s hasty retreat southward, SIGINT was not able to
provide much in the way of substantive intelligence
information about the strength, locations, or movements
of the three hundred thousand Chinese troops following
them. Apart from exploiting intercepted low-level railroad
traffic, AFSA had devoted virtually no resources to
monitoring Chinese military communications prior to the
Chinese intervention in Korea. Even if the U.S. military
SIGINT units in the Far East were intercepting Chinese
radio traffic, they didn’t have any Chinese linguists who
could translate the intercepts. The result was that as of
mid-December 1950, senior U.S. military commanders
found themselves in the embarrassing position of having
to admit that information from all sources was “vague and
indefinite on the exact disposition of CCF [Chinese
Communist Forces] in Korea.”—

On December 23, Lieutenant General Walker was killed
in a jeep accident. He was replaced by Lieutenant General
Matthew Ridgway, one of the U.S. Army’s best field
commanders, who flew in from Washington on December

26 and discovered that the intelligence situation map at
his Eighth Army headquarters in Seoul showed only “a
large red goose egg” north of his front lines, indicating an
estimated 174,000 PLA troops — which was all that army
intelligence then knew about the estimated strength and
position of the Chinese forces. While American units had
obtained some intelligence from two captured Chinese
soldiers, everything else that Eighth Army G-2 believed
to be true about Chinese PLA troop dispositions was pure
speculation.—

But while AES A was producing no intelligence about
the Chinese forces, it continued to generate vast amounts
of data about the North Korean military forces because of
its continued ability to read all major North Korean
ciphers. According to a declassified NS A history, as of
December 1950 AES A was solving and translating 90
percent of the encrypted North Korean messages it was
intercepting.— For example, SIGINT derived from these
communications was instrumental in allowing the U.S.
Navy to successfully evacuate by December 24 the entire
U.S. Tenth Corps plus tens of thousands of refugees from
the North Korean port of Hungnam. SIGINT also
confirmed that the Chinese and North Koreans did not
intend to disrupt the evacuation by air attack.—

The Chinese January 1951 Offensive in

Korea

On New Year’s Eve, December 31, 1950, seven Chinese
armies launched a major offensive across the 38th
parallel, which shattered the Eighth U.S. Army’s
defensive positions along the Imjin River. Seoul fell for a
second time on January 4, 1951, the last U.S. forces
having fled the city the night before.—

As American forces struggled to keep a foothold in
Korea, there was little SIGINT to offer by way of
intercepts of Chinese military radio transmissions because
of a lack of Chinese linguists, and also because almost all
available radio intercept resources were focused on the
more productive North Korean military target. As a result,
the SIGINT organizations were producing virtually
nothing in the way of usable tactical intelligence on the
Chinese military at a time when U.S. field commanders in
Korea were desperate for anyXidhii of information.—
Despite these inherent weaknesses, SIGINT performed
brilliantly during the month of January, helping
Lieutenant General Ridgway’s Eighth Army decimate the
newly rebuilt North Korean Second and Fifth Corps as
they strove to break through the American-South Korean
defensive lines in the Korean central highlands. When the
South Korean Second Corps collapsed, it was SIGINT
that revealed the North Korean attack plans, with a
decrypted January 2 message from the North Korean
general staff in Pyongyang ordering the commander of the
North Korean Fifth Corps to push through the breach and

“pursue the enemy, not giving them time to rest.”— By
January 15, Eighth Army G-2 was convinced from an
accumulation of information derived from SIGINT that
the Chinese and North Koreans were readying themselves
for yet another major offensive. But SIGINT revealed that
the enemy forces had taken murderously heavy losses in
the fighting up to that point, and that certain key units
were barely combat ready. Another critically important
piece of intelligence provided by SIGINT was a January
23 decrypted message revealing that the entire Chinese
Ninth Army Group was reforming near the North Korean
port of Wonsan and would “take a rest until the end of
February.” Ridgway now knew that three Chinese armies
would not be taking part in the upcoming Chinese-North
Korean offensive.—

Acting on this intelligence, on January 24, Ridgway
launched a counterattack called Operation Thunderbolt,
which by January 3 1 had forced the Chinese forces back
toward Seoul. By the end of January, SIGINT revealed
that the Chinese and North Korean forces were exhausted,
short of ammunition and supplies, and decimated by
battlefield casualties and infectious diseases.—

The Ides of March: The Russians Are Here!

In late March 1951, an event took place that literally
overnight changed the way the entire U.S. intelligence
community thought about the war in Korea. According to

declassified documents, on March 30 the U.S. Air Force
radio intercept unit in Japan, the 1st Radio Squadron,
Mobile, commanded by Major Lowell Jameson, “made
one of the most important contributions to Air Force
Intelligence in its history.” Intercepts of MiG radio traffic
confirmed the long-held suspicion that the Russians were
controlling the air defense of North Korea and Manchuria,
not the Chinese or the North Koreans.— As a former air
force Russian linguist stationed in the Far East recalled,
“we were actually monitoring the Soviet Air Force
fighting the American Air Force and we were listening to
the Soviet pilots being directed by Soviet ground control
people to fight the Americans. We were fighting our own
little war with the Soviets.”—

The decision was made to keep this revelation out of all
widely circulated intelligence publications, such as the
CIA’s National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs), in order to
prevent the leakage of this highly sensitive intelligence to
right-wing members of Congress, such as Senator Joseph
McCarthy, who would no doubt have used (or misused)
the information to drum up public support for war with
the USSR at a time when the U.S. government was trying
to prevent that from happening.— While President
Truman had made a bold decision to resist communist
aggression in Korea, the war effort (or “police action,” as
he described it) was facing decreasing support from the
public even as American paranoia about communist

threats from abroad and subversion within began to create
great difficulties for the administration. Amid this
poisonous atmosphere at home and the fraught situation in
the Far East, the U.S. military prepared for Armageddon.

General MaeArthur ’s Dismissal

On April 1 1, 1951, just as the U.S. Armed Forces reached
a maximum state of readiness for nuclear war, without
any prior public warning President Truman fired General
MaeArthur from his post as commander in chief of U.S.
forces in the Far East.—

The president’s decision stunned the nation. As it turned
out, the AFSA code breakers at Arlington Hall had a great
deal to do with Truman’s decision to fire America’s most
popular military commander. Throughout 1950 and 1951,
AFSA was intercepting and decrypting the telegrams of
the various foreign diplomats based in Tokyo. Among the
most prominent targets being exploited were the
diplomatic cables of the ambassadors from Spain,
Portugal, and Brazil.— Both MaeArthur and Major
General Charles Willoughby made the mistake of
candidly disclosing their extreme political views on
Russia and China to these three ambassadors. Among the
comments that MaeArthur made was that he hoped the
Soviets would intervene militarily in Korea, which he
believed would give the United States the excuse to
destroy once and for all Mao Tse-tung’s communist

regime in Beijing. Mac Arthur also told the foreign
ambassadors that he thought war with Russia was
inevitable.—

In mid-March 1951, Truman’s naval aide, Admiral
Robert Dennison, handed him a batch of four decrypted
messages sent the preceding week by the Spanish
ambassador in Tokyo, Francisco Jose del Castillo,
summarizing his private conversations with MacArthur.
The late Ambassador Paul Nitze, who was then head of
the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, said in an
interview, “From those communications, it was perfectly
clear that what MacArthur had in mind was that either he
would have a complete victory in North Korea or, if the
Chinese Communists got involved, then the war would be
spread to the Chinese mainland as a whole and the object
of the game would then be the unseating of Mao Tse-tung
and the restoration of Chiang Kai-shek. In the course of
doing that you had your nuclear weapons if you needed
them. This would then enable one to do what was
strategically important and that was to defeat the Chinese
Communists. That was clearly what was on MacArthur’ s
mind. Part of the reason he took these excessive risks was
to create a situation in which we would be involved in a
war with the Chinese Communists.”—

Given the overwhelming preponderance of evidence
that MacArthur was deliberately ignoring orders from
Washington, and with the SIGINT intercepts indicating
that he was secretly hoping for an all-out world war with

the Soviets and the Chinese, Truman fired him. In
retrospect, it was almost certainly the right thing to do.
But it had a catastrophic effect on Truman’s standing with
the American people. His poll numbers sank like a stone
in the months that followed. By mid- 1951, his approval
ratings had plummeted to 23 percent, the lowest ever
recorded by the Gallup Poll for a sitting American
president.

General Ridgway ’s Crisis

The man chosen by the Pentagon to replace General
Douglas Mac Arthur as commander in chief. Far East, was
General Matthew Ridgway, who before moving into
MacArthur’s office suite in the Dai Ichi Building in
downtown Tokyo had commanded the Eighth U.S. Army
in Korea since December 1950. The hard-nosed former
paratrooper took command at a moment when the
intelligence picture in the region was bleak — and would
only become grimmer as the months went on.

Intelligence reporting convinced Ridgway that a storm
was about to break on his forces. All intelligence,
including that extracted from POWs as early as February
1951, indicated that the Chinese and North Koreans were
about to launch their massive Spring “Fifth Phase”
Offensive in Korea. SIGINT revealed that there had been
two major conferences attended by all Chinese and North
Korean army and corps commanders, as well as Russian

military advisers, to work out the details of the offensive.
Additional intelligence reports received in March
indicated that D-day for the Chinese-North Korean
offensive was expected to be some time in April. Then on
April 1, the North Koreans changed their codes, a sure
sign that something dramatic was in the offing. But thanks
to the efforts of the U.S. Army code breakers in Korea,
within a week the new North Korean ciphers were
solved.—

Over the next two weeks, the SIGINT analysts in
Washington and Tokyo laid bare the plans for the
upcoming Chinese-North Korean offensive. Thanks in
large part to SIGINT, Ridgway was able to discern weeks
in advance that the brunt of the offensive would come in
the mountainous central portion of the front, and not
along the flat west coast of Korea north of Seoul. SIGINT
also provided a fairly complete picture of the enemy
forces committed, specifically four newly arrived Chinese
armies plus two North Korean corps. And most important,
it provided relatively clear indications about when the
offensive would start. SIGINT also detailed the massive
buildup of Russian, Chinese, and North Korean combat
aircraft in Manchuria, plus attempts by the North Koreans
to repair their airfields. When the enemy offensive finally
commenced on April 22, Ridgway knew virtually
everything about it except the exact time that it was due to
begin.—

By the middle of June, SIGINT intercepts of North

Korean radio traffic would reveal that the Chinese-North
Korean offensive, which had sputtered to a halt earlier
that month, had cost the communists a staggering 221,000
Chinese and North Korean casualties. COMINT also
provided hard evidence of the communists’ substantial
logistical difficulties, which required that tens of
thousands of frontline PLA forces be employed behind
the lines to keep supply lines open, and documented the
severe food shortages being experienced by Chinese
forces at the front, which the Chinese commanders
blamed for the collapse of the offensive.—

The War Clouds Darken

The shocker came on April 25, three days after the
Chinese-North Korean offensive in Korea began, when
SIGINT revealed that Soviet air force flight activity
throughout the USSR and Eastern Europe had ceased
completely. American and British radio intercept
operators around the world began cabling urgent reports
to Washington and London stating that they were picking
up virtually no radio chatter coming from any Soviet
military airfields in Eastern Europe or the Soviet Far East.
Alarm bells sounded all over Washington. Soviet air force
radio silence was regarded as one of the key indicators
that the Soviets were preparing for a military offensive.—
This ominous silence convinced General Ridgway that
the Russians were about to launch their much-anticipated

air assault against his forces in Korea and Japan. SIGINT
showed that the enemy had 860 combat aircraft in
Manchuria, 260 of which were modem MiG- 15 jet
fighters. SIGINT also showed that 380 of the 860 combat
aircraft were “controlled” by the Soviet air force,
including all of the MiG- 15 jet fighters. And SIGINT
confirmed that there had been a significant increase in
radio traffic between Moscow and the headquarters of the
three Long Range Air Force (LEAF) air armies; that there
had been an increase in operational flight-training
activities by LEAF TU-4 Bull nuclear-capable bombers in
the Euro pean portion of the USSR; and that a new Soviet
air defense fighter interceptor command headquarters had
just been established at Vladivostok and Dairen.—
Fortunately, the Soviet air attack never took place.

The Lights Go Out

In the first week of July 195 1, just as cease-fire tmce talks
were getting started at Kaesong, disaster stmck the
American cryptologic effort in Korea yet again. In a
massive shift in their communications and cipher security
procedures, the North Korean military stopped using
virtually all of the codes and ciphers that the Americans
had been successfully exploiting since August 1950, and
they replaced them with unbreakable one-time pad cipher
systems on all of their high-level and even lower-level
radio circuits. Radio frequency changes were now made

more often, radio call signs were encrypted, and
unencrypted plaintext radio traffic virtually disappeared
from North Korean People’s Army (NKPA) radio circuits.
Moreover, the North Koreans shifted a significant portion
of their operational communications traffic to landline
circuits that blocked it from being intercepted.

This move by the North Koreans effectively killed off
the sole remaining productive source of high-level
COMINT that was then available to American
intelligence in the Far East, leaving AFSA and the service
cryptologic organizations with only low-level tactical
voice communications left as a viable source of
intelligence. Today, NS A officials believe that this move
was prompted by Soviet security advisers with the North
Korean forces, who were alarmed at the shoddy
communications security (COMSEC) procedures utilized
by the North Korean forces.—

The Good, the Bad, and the Really Ugly

On the positive side for the COMINT community, during
the first and most perilous year of the Korean War, AFSA
and the military COMINT units in the Far East were
virtually the only source of timely and reliable
intelligence for American field commanders in Korea
about North Korean military activities. But the agency’s
cryptanalysts were never able to solve any of the high-
level ciphers used by the Chinese military in Korea,

which meant that American commanders in the Far East
never truly understood their principal enemy’s intentions
or capabilities.

A former NS A historian concluded, “There were
successes, there were failures, but the failures tended to
overshadow the successes.”— The net result was that
SIGINT did not provide anywhere near the quantity or
quality of high-level strategic intelligence that it had
during World War II. According to a declassified NSA
study, there were numerous successes during the Korean
War; “to most intelligence consumers, however, the
results still looked extremely thin, especially with the lack
of COMINT from [high-level] communications.”—

CHAPTER 3

F ight for Survival

The Creation of the National Seeurity

Agency

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

—W. B. YEATS, ’THE SECOND COMING”

The Dog Has Teeth: The Arrival of
General Ralph Canine

Among those inside the U.S. intelligence community who
were privy to AFSA’s secrets, the announcement of fifty-
five-year-old army major general Ralph Canine’s
appointment as AES A director in July 1951 came as a
huge surprise, but it didn’t cause even a ripple in the
newspapers because few members of the press or public
had any idea of what the agency did. Not only was
General Canine (pronounced keh-NINE) not a West Point
graduate, but he also had very little prior experience in
intelligence (he had only served as the deputy chief of

Army G-2 for ten months before being named to the post
at AFSA), and he knew nothing whatsoever about codes
and ciphers.- He was promoted to lieutenant general and
became the second — and last — AFSA director.

Intelligence insiders had expected that Brigadier
General Carter Clarke, a veteran intelligence officer with
long experience with SIGINT, would be appointed to the
position. But Clarke, then commanding a logistics unit in
Japan, wanted nothing to do with the deeply troubled
AFSA and nixed his own nomination, as did virtually
every other senior army and air force intelligence officer
qualified for the post. So Canine got the job by default.
He told friends that he had initially been “violently
againsf’ becoming the head of AFSA, preferring instead
to take retirement after thirty-five years of military
service, including combat duty in two world wars. But he
had been convinced by colleagues in Army G-2 to take
the job against his better judgment. -

Canine was “old army” — a tough and efficient chief of
staff of a corps in General George Patton’s Third Army,
where he was famous for “kicking the ass” of recalcitrant
division and regimental commanders. And that is exactly
what Canine did at AFSA. In much the same way that his
counterpart at the CIA, General Walter Smith, rebuilt and
reinvigorated his dormant intelligence organization, so
too did General Canine. In the six years (1951 to 1956)
that he served as the director of AFSA and then the
National Security Agency, the hard-charging Canine

made his organization a force to be reckoned with inside
the U.S. intelligence community

But even the resourceful Canine could not overcome the
myriad problems that bedeviled his organization. Among
other things, SIGINT produced by AFSA still did not
provide U.S. forces in Korea and its other customers with
the intelligence (in quantity and quality) they needed. The
squabbling and feuding within AFSA itself was causing
no end of problems for the agency’s managers, who were
struggling to help win the war in Korea as well as handle
a series of potentially explosive international crises.
Senior army and navy officers at AFSA fought vicious
internal bureaucratic battles with one another as well as
their air force counterparts. And all three of the military
services refused to cooperate with the agency’s civilian
customers at the FBI, CIA, and State Department. To say
that AFSA was dysfunctional would be an
understatement.-

Canine had a real fight on his hands. Internally, he made
sweeping changes in the agency’s management in January
1952. One of those who would leave in the middle of this
reorganization was Frank Rowlett. Like many of his
colleagues, he found this radical house cleaning to be the
proverbial final straw. Angry and frustrated, in a fit of
spite Rowlett accepted the offer of a job helping the CIA
build its own SIGINT organization.-

Canine fought off attacks from the military services and

tried to defend the agency against the increasingly hostile
criticism of its customers, but ultimately he lost the battle.
In November 1951, CIA director Smith struck a mortal
blow. Smith knew that the armed services would try to
seize their shares of control of SIGINT if AFSA were to
be dismantled, and he believed that SIGINT had to be
consolidated in the form of an entirely new entity. His
bureaucratic masterstroke was instigating the creation of
an “outside” committee to evaluate and, hopefully, doom
AFSA. The committee was headed by George Brownell, a
New York corporate lawyer and a good friend of the
CIA’s deputy director, Allen Dulles. The military services
were completely shut out. The only representation on the
Brownell Committee the military got was Canine, who
held the nominal position of consultant but was not a
voting member. From the makeup of the committee,
senior military officials knew that they were not going to
like what came out of its work.-

Rain of Devastation: The Brownell
Committee Report

At ten forty-five a.m. on the morning of Friday, June 13,
1952, President Truman welcomed CIA director Smith
and James Lay Jr., executive secretary of the National
Security Council (NSC), into the Oval Office at the White
House for a regularly scheduled meeting. Smith, however,
was the bearer of bad tidings. He reached into his

briefcase and gave Truman a copy of a 141 -page Top
Secret Codeword report on the state of health of the U.S.
national SIGINT effort. It was the much-anticipated
Brownell Report on AFSA.-

It is clear in reading between the lines of the Brownell
Committee’s report that all of the managerial sins of the
agency’s leadership would have been forgiven if AFSA
had been producing decent intelligence. But it was not.

The Brownell Committee called for a complete overhaul
and reorganization of AFSA. In effect, Brownell and his
fellow committee members recommended scrapping it in
its current form because it was unsalvageable. Instead,
they recommended replacing it with a new unified
SIGINT agency that would possess greater authority to
operate a modem, centralized global SIGINT effort on
behalf of the U.S. government.

Not surprisingly. Smith and Secretary of State Dean
Acheson enthusiastically endorsed the committee’s
recommendations. Secretary of Defense Robert Lovett
also approved the report’s findings. By September 1952,
the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the military services, under
intense pressure from the Office of the Secretary of
Defense, reluctantly accepted most of the
recommendations. Throughout October, Canine tried
unsuccessfully to negotiate some changes in the wording
of a draft directive to be signed by Tmman; that would
have given the new agency more power to do its own
analysis, but this proposal was summarily shot down.

Canine was told in no uncertain terms that the deal was
done and that it was time for him to take his seat and let
events take their course.-

The Birth of the National Seeurity Ageney

At ten forty-five a.m. on Friday morning, October 24,
1952, Smith and Lay returned to the White House to meet
with Truman only four months after Smith had given him
his copy of the Brownell Report. After the usual
handshakes and brief pleasantries. Lay placed on
Truman’s desk a buff file folder with a “Top Secref’
cover sheet stapled to its front. Inside the folder was an
eight-page document titled “Communications Intelligence
Activities,” which had a tab at the rear indicating where
the president’s signature was required. We do not know
what, if anything, was said among the three men. All we
know for certain is that Truman signed the document, and
ten minutes later Smith and Lay walked out of the Oval
Office with the file folder. Except for Truman, Smith, and
Lay, very few people in Washington knew that the
president had just presided over the creation of the
National Security Agency (NSA).-

The eight-page directive that Truman had signed made
SIGINT a national responsibility and designated the
secretary of defense as the U.S. government’s executive
agent for all SIGINT activities, which placed NS A within
the ambit of the Defense Department and outside the

jurisdiction of the CIA. Truman gave NS A a degree of
power and authority above and beyond that ever given
previously or since to any American intelligence agency,
placing it outside the rubric of the rest of the U.S.
intelligence community. Truman also ordered that the
new agency’s powers be clearly defined and strengthened
through the issuance of a new directive titled National
Security Council Intelligence Directive No. 9
“Communications Intelligence.”— The creation of NSA
got in just under the wire. November 4, 1952, was
Election Day in America. That evening, Dwight
Eisenhower won in a landslide, decisively beating Adlai
Stevenson to become the next president of the United
States.

CHAPTER 4

The Inventory of Ignorance

SIGINT During the Eisenhower
Administration:

I953-I96I

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

^DESIDERIUS ERASMUS

The Unhappy Inheritance

Dwight Eisenhower was sworn in as the thirty-fourth
president of the United States on Tuesday, January 20,
1953. As supreme allied commander in Europe and a top
customer for Ultra decrypts during World War II, he
understood more about the value of intelligence (and its
limitations) than any president since Ulysses S. Grant. But
nothing could have prepared Eisenhower for what he
confronted when he took office.

Five weeks after his inauguration, on March 4, the
Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin suddenly died. Eisenhower

was not happy that the first news that he got of Stalin’s
death came from Associated Press and United Press
International wire service reports from Moscow. Like the
rest of the U.S. intelligence community, NS A had
provided no indication whatsoever that Stalin was ill. In
fact, in the month before Stalin’s death NS A had sent to
the White House decrypted messages from the
Argentinean and Indian ambassadors in Moscow detailing
their private audiences with the Russian dictator, which
tended to suggest to the intelligence analysts that the
Russian dictator’s health was good. In the chaotic days
after Stalin’s death, the only SIGINT that NS A could
provide the White House with were decrypted telegrams
concerning the reactions of Western leaders and a number
of foreign Communist Party chiefs to the death of Stalin.
All in all, it was not a very impressive performance.-
Concem inside Washington about NSA’s performance
mounted when on June 16, rioting broke out in East
Berlin as thousands of civilian protesters took to the
streets en masse to register their pent-up anger at the
continued occupation of their country by the Russians.
Within twenty-four hours, the rioting had spread to
virtually every other city in East Germany. NSA’s
performance during the early stages of the Berlin Crisis
was viewed in Washington as disappointing because most
of the early intelligence reaching the White House about
what was transpiring in East Berlin came from the CIA’s
Berlin station and from wire service news reports, with

very little coming from NSA.-

Trying to Peer Behind the Iron Curtain

Regrettably, the reason SIGINT provided no warning was
because Soviet high-grade ciphers remained “an
unrevealed mystery.”- Despite the commitment of
massive numbers of personnel and equally massive
amounts of equipment to this critically important target,
there is little discernible evidence that any progress was
made in this area. And as the years passed and the
Russian ciphers continued to elude NSA’s ability to solve
them, the pressure on the agency inexorably mounted to
do whatever it took for a breakthrough. A Top Secret
report sent to Eisenhower in May 1955 recommended,
“This is of such great importance that monetary
considerations should be waived and an effort at least
equal to the Manhattan Project should be exerted at once.”
But Frank Rowlett, who was now the head of the CIA’s
own SIGINT organization. Staff D, was not impressed
with the increasingly urgent recommendations coming out
of the multitude of blue-ribbon panels, study groups,
review panels, and committees created during the 1950s
to find a solution to NSA’s code-breaking problems,
telling an interviewer decades later, “Most of the people
on these panels would not have known a Russian cipher if
it hit them on the head . . . Rule by committee is a terrible
way to run a spy agency.”-

NSA’s SIGINT effort against mainland China was even
more frustrating than the Russian problem. Unlike the
attack on the Russian ciphers, which received unlimited
attention and resources, the NS A cryptanalytic attack on
Chinese codes and ciphers was hampered by perpetual
shortages of manpower and equipment. The result was
that virtually no progress was being made in solving any
of the high-grade Chinese cipher systems and NS A had to
be content with exploiting low-level Chinese plaintext
radio traffic and traffic analysis for information about
what was going on inside China. And as if this situation
was not bad enough already, after the signing of the July
1953 armistice agreement in Korea, NS A lost most of its
access to Chinese and North Korean military
communications when these forces switched from radio to
landlines. A February 1954 report to the NSC conceded
the result: that relatively little was known about what was
going on inside China. And a recently declassified CIA
report bluntly states, “The picture for the major target area
in Asia, i.e. Communist China, is very dark.”-

1956 — The Year of Crisis

As NS A was in the process of moving from Arlington
Hall to its new headquarters at Fort Meade, in Maryland,
in the fall of 1956, NSA was struck nearly simultaneously
by three international crises that stretched the agency’s
resources to the limit.

The first was the violent worker riots that took place in
the Polish city of Poznan in late June 1956. The riots were
crushed by Polish troops using live ammunition, and at
least fifty civilians were killed. The events precipitated a
political crisis within the hard-line Polish government.
When the Polish Communist Party met in Warsaw on
October 19, it elected a progressive-minded reformer
named Wladyslaw Gomulka, who had just been released
from prison for having been a “counterrevolutionary,” as
Poland’s new leader. NS A immediately picked up
indications that the Russians were preparing to use
military force against Poland. The crisis was defused on
October 24, when Gomulka reaffirmed Poland’s political
and military ties with the USSR, leading the Russians to
order their troops to return to their barracks. -
On the afternoon of October 23, the day before
Gomulka ended the Polish crisis, peaceful anti-Soviet
demonstrations in downtown Budapest escalated into a
full-blown armed insurrection against the Soviet-backed,
hard-line communist Hungarian government. Hungary
immediately called for Soviet military assistance in
putting down the riots, which by the end of the day had
spread from Budapest to a number of other major
Hungarian cities. Within hours of the rioting’ s breaking
out in Budapest, the twenty-seven thousand Russian
troops based inside Hungary began to move. Early on the
morning of October 24, intercept operators at the U.S.
Army listening post at Bad Aibling Station, in West

Germany, began noting all four Russian combat divisions
based in Hungary rapidly converging on Budapest. At ten
twenty-eight a.m., the Bad Aibling listening post
intercepted an order passed in the clear from the
commander of the Russian Second Guards Mechanized
Division authorizing his troops to use their tank cannons
and heavy artillery to “disperse the rioters” in Budapest. It
marked the beginning of a bloody day of street fighting
between Russian troops and Hungarian civilians
throughout the city. By the end of the day 24, radio
intercepts reaching NS A had revealed that selected Soviet
Long Range Air Force bomber units in the western USSR
had been placed on a heightened state of alert, as had
selected Russian ground, air, and naval forces stationed in
Eastern Europe, especially in East Germany.-
By October 27, SIGINT had confirmed that there were
now four full-strength Russian combat divisions totaling
forty thousand troops deployed in and around virtually all
major Hungarian cities, with especially high numbers in
Budapest. SIGINT showed that the Russian Second
Guards Mechanized Division and the Thirty-second
Mechanized Division had borne the brunt of the fighting
up until that point in downtown Budapest, with the
intercepts reflecting heavy personnel and equipment
losses among those troops as well as severe ammunition
shortages in some units. Intercepts also showed that large
numbers of seriously wounded Russian military personnel
were being airlifted from the Budapest-Tokol airport to

the city of L’vov in the USSR. The problem for Russia
was that the Hungarian rioters still controlled large
portions of Budapest and other major Hungarian cities.-

Then two days later, on the morning of October 29,
Israeli forces attacked Egyptian forces based in the Sinai
Peninsula and the Gaza Strip. Tensions in the Middle East
had been building since June, when Egypt forced the
British to remove the last of their forces from the Suez
Canal, which had been nationalized. Since early October,
NS A and the rest of the U.S. intelligence community had
been intensively tracking the buildup of Israeli forces
along the border with Egypt, as well as a comparable
buildup of French and British forces on Cyprus. By
October 27, all signs pointed to an imminent Israeli attack
on Egypt. A report was sent out by the CIA that afternoon
stating, “The likelihood has increased of major Israeli
reprisals, probably against Egypt, in the near future.” The
next day, SIGINT reports coming out of NS A confirmed
that Israel was about to attack Egypt, with fragmentary
SIGINT reports indicating that British forces based on
Cyprus appeared ready to strike Egypt as well. Later that
afternoon, NS A reported to the White House that it had
monitored a massive jump in diplomatic communications
traffic passing between Tel Aviv and Paris. This led CIA
analysts to conclude, correctly as it turned out, that
“France [might] be planning [military] actions in
conjunction with Israel against Egypt.

The following morning, October 29, the deputy director

of the CIA’s Office of Current Intelligence, Knight
McMahan, was about to brief Democratic presidential
candidate Adlai Stevenson at his hotel in Boston.
According to McMahan’s recollection, the previous day
“the Watch Committee was reviewing newly available
intelligence confirming that Israel, with British and
French support, was completing its mobilization and
would attack Egypt. Because the evidence came from
intercepted communications, this sensitive information
was not included in the written briefing materials
prepared for Stevenson.'' Instead, McMahan intended to
handle this breaking story orally. But before McMahan
could utter a word, one of Stevenson’s aides rushed into
the room to announce that according to wire service
reports, Israeli troops had launched their offensive against
Egyptian forces in the Sinai.— A furious Eisenhower,
reacting to the invasion, called British prime minister
Anthony Eden and asked his old friend if he had gone out
of his mind.

Six days later, on November 4, while the fighting in the
Sinai was still raging, Soviet military forces in Hungary
moved to crush once and for all the uprising in Budapest
and other cities. Two days before the Soviets moved,
SIGINT showed that they were up to something.
Beginning on the evening of November 2, SIGINT
detected massive Soviet troop movements inside
Hungary, as well as troop reinforcements crossing into the
country from the western USSR. Clearly, the Soviet

military was preparing to attack. On the morning of
November 4, Soviet troops attacked Budapest and other
Hungarian cities that had risen up in revolt. By eight a.m.,
Soviet troops had captured the Hungarian parliament
building in downtown Budapest and had arrested virtually
the entire Hungarian government and parliament,
including the newly elected reformist prime minister Imre
Nagy. The battle for Budapest was over even before it
started. An estimated twenty-five thousand Hungarians
were killed in the uprising. Again, Soviet casualty figures
are unknown, but were probably heavy.— (There is an
ongoing debate about the extent of the CIA’s role in
encouraging the uprising. In any event, Eisenhower
decided not to intervene in Hungary, disavowed any
involvement in or approval of the Suez invasion, and
effectively forced Israel, France, and Britain to put an end
to it.)

On the afternoon of November 4, NS A declared an alert
and placed all its assets in a heightened state of readiness.
The alert, which was designated Yankee, was prompted
by a series of bombastic threats issued by senior Soviet
leaders threatening to intervene militarily in the Middle
East, as well as some fragmentary intelligence indicating
that Soviet military forces in Eastern Europe and the
western USSR had dramatically increased their readiness
levels. There was also some intelligence indicating that
between two and four Soviet attack submarines had been
sent into the Mediterranean. But SIGINT confirmed that

Soviet military forces, such as their crack airborne troops,

had not been placed on alert, and there were no

indications of Soviet forces being redeployed in

preparation for intervention in the Middle East conflict. A

declassified NS A history notes, “Timely reporting over a

period of months could have left no doubt within the

[Eisenhower] administration that Soviet diplomacy

consisted of posturing. They were not going to go down

to the Middle East to bail out anyone. Forces just weren’t
”12

moving. —

The output that NS A produced during these crises
indicates that the agency performed creditably. In the
weeks leading up to the 1956 Arab-Israeli War, SIGINT
proved to be a critically important source of intelligence
indicating that war was imminent. A declassified 1957
CIA postmortem evaluation of U.S. intelligence
performance prior to the Israeli-British-French attack on
Egypt notes that “the Watch Committee, in October 1956,
provided several days of advance warning of the
imminent possibility of Israeli-Egyptian hostilities and 24
hours’ specific warning of Israel’s intention to attack
Egypt with French and (initially) tacit British support.”—
During the Soviet military intervention in Hungary, an
NS A history notes, SIGINT “provided fairly complete
indicators concerning Soviet military unit movements
throughout the crisis.” The NS A history also makes clear
that SIGINT was the only reliable intelligence source
available to the U.S. intelligence community on Soviet

military movements and activities in Hungary.—

Despite providing timely intelligence, NSA’s overall
performance revealed that the agency’s hidebound
bureaucracy had trouble reacting rapidly to extraordinary
circumstances. NS A was roundly criticized for the
intelligence material that it produced. A declassified NS A
history notes, “As for crisis response, all was chaos. The
cryptologic community proved incapable of marshaling
its forces in a flexible fashion to deal with developing
trouble spots. The events of the year did not demonstrate
success — they simply provided a case study to learn
from.”—

The Samford Era at NSA

On November 23, 1956, General Ralph Canine retired
after almost forty years in the U.S. Army. His
replacement as NSA director was Lieutenant General
John Samford of the U.S. Air Force. Bom in tiny
Hagerman, New Mexico, on August 29, 1905, Samford
graduated from West Point in 1928 and joined the U.S.
Army Air Corps. During World War II, he served as the
chief of staff of the Eighth Air Force from 1942 until
1944, then at the Pentagon as a senior intelligence officer.
After the war, Samford held a series of senior intelligence
billets, becoming the chief of U.S. Air Force intelligence
in 1951. He held this position until becoming NSA’s vice
director in July 1956, then director four months later, in

November 1956.—

As head of air force intelligence, Samford was well
known as a defense hawk and one of the primary
proponents within the air force of the idea that the Soviets
were seeking strategic nuclear superiority over the United
States. Many senior NS A staff also remembered
Samford’ s strident opposition to the formation of NS A in
October 1952. When he was announced as the new
director, many of the civilian staff at Fort Meade were
alarmed about what his appointment would mean for the
agency.—

But Samford proved to be a pleasant surprise. Polished
and thoughtful, he quickly became a convert to the idea
that the rapidly growing NS A would someday be a
superpower within the American intelligence community.
His quiet but diligent work on behalf of the agency earned
him the informal moniker Slamming Sammy among his
staff. Samford also moved rapidly to heal the gaping
wounds that had developed in the relationship between
NS A and the CIA during Canine’s tumultuous tenure. A
declassified NS A history notes, “Samford was a
consummate diplomat, and he probably gained more by
soft-soaping the downtown intelligence people than
Canine could have done through head-on collisions.”—

Forward! Ever Forward!

Just as his predecessor had, Samford found that the Soviet

Union ate up the vast majority of NSA’s SIGINT
collection resources. But like his predecessor’s,
Samford’s tenure was marked by the continuing failure of
the agency’s cryptanalysts to break into the Soviet high-
grade ciphers. Just as in baseball, NSA’s senior leadership
tried to shake up the management of their cryptanalytic
effort to see if that would produce results, but to no avail.

By 1958, a whopping 54 percent of NSA’s SIGINT
collection resources were dedicated to monitoring military
and civilian targets inside the Soviet Union. But NSA’s
cryptanalysts had actually lost ground since the Korean
War. The Russians put a series of new and improved
cipher machines into service, each of which was harder to
solve than the machines they replaced. And the
communications traffic generated by these machines
remained impenetrable. The Soviets also continued to
shift an ever-increasing percentage of their secret
communications from the airwaves to telegraph lines,
buried cables, and micro wave radio-relay systems, which
was a simple and effective way of keeping this traffic
away from NSA’s thousands of radio intercept
operators.—

NS A and the U-2 Overflight Program

Even if NSA’s cryptanalysts were stymied by the Russian
high-grade ciphers, other branches of NS A were
producing intelligence. One of the most important, albeit

unheralded, missions performed by NS A during General
Samford’s tenure was providing SIGINT support to the
CIA’s U-2 reconnaissance aircraft that were engaged in
secretly overflying the USSR. Declassified documents
show that between April 1956 and May 1960, the CIA
conducted twenty-four U-2 overflights of the USSR,
which produced some of the most important intelligence
information about what the Russians were up for the
information-starved American intelligence analysts back
in Washington.—

Although it is not recognized in CIA literature on the U-
2 program, newly declassified documents show that over
time a close and symbiotic relationship developed
between NS A and CIA. NS A derived incredibly valuable
intelligence about Soviet military capabilities by
monitoring how the Soviets reacted to each U-2
overflight. And over time, the CIA increasingly came to
depend on intelligence information collected by NS A in
order to target the U-2 over-flights, with a declassified
NS A history noting that as time went by SIGINT
“became more and more a cue card for U-2 missions.”—

The genesis of the NSA-CIA relationship regarding the
U-2 program dates back to a Top Secret May 1956
agreement between the CIA and NS A, whereby NSA’s
listening posts situated around the Soviet periphery were
tasked with closely monitoring Soviet air defense
reactions to each U-2 over-flight mission by intercepting
the radio transmissions of Soviet radar operators as they

tracked the CIA reconnaissance aircraft flying deep inside
their country. The American radio intercept operators
could copy the radio transmissions of Soviet radar
operators deep inside the USSR, in some cases thousands
of miles away. This meant that American radio intercept
operators in England and Germany could listen to Soviet
radar operators in the Urals or deep inside Kazakhstan as
they excitedly tracked the flight paths of the U-2s. A
former U.S. Air Force intercept operator recalled, “We
could track our U-2s using the Soviet’s own radar, long
after our U-2s were out of the range of our own long
range radar stations.”—

The intercepts stemming from the U-2 overflights
proved to be an intelligence bonanza for the analysts in
NSA’s Soviet Air Division, headed by a veteran U.S. Air
Force SIGINT officer named Colonel Harry Towler Jr.
Between 1956 and 1960, Towler’ s division produced
reams of reports detailing the strength, readiness, and
capabilities of the Soviet air defense forces. Intercepts
collected during the early U-2 overflights in the summer
of 1956 revealed that the accuracy of the Soviet radars
was not very good, but over time their accuracy improved
markedly as new systems were introduced. The intercepts
also revealed that the command and control network of
the huge Soviet air defense system was cumbersome, and
oftentimes very slow to react to extraordinary situations.
A former NS A analyst involved in the program recalled
that by correlating intercepts of Soviet radar tracking

transmissions with intercepts of Russian early-warning
radars, he could literally “time with a stopwatch” how fast
the Russians reacted to each individual U-2 overflight.
SIGINT also revealed that the Soviet air defense fighter
force was larger than previously believed. Every time a
U-2 conducted an overflight of the USSR, the Soviets
scrambled dozens of fighter interceptors from different
bases to try to shoot the aircraft down. By monitoring the
air-to-ground radio traffic between the fighters and their
home bases, NS A was able to identify dozens of
previously unknown Soviet air defense fighter regiments
throughout the USSR.—

The U-2 intercepts also revealed how poor the operating
capabilities of the Soviet fighters and their pilots
sometimes were. While in training in the U.S. during the
1960s, a former USAFSS Russian linguist listened to a
training tape of intercepted PVO air-to-ground radio
transmissions during an attempt by Russian MiG fighters
to shoot down a CIA U-2 reconnaissance aircraft flying
over Russia. The linguist recalled that one of the MiG
fighters flew too high, which resulted in the plane’s jet
engines flaming out. The pilot could not restart his engine
at such a high altitude, and his plane plummeted to the
earth. As caught on the tape, the Russian MiG pilot spent
his last seconds alive screaming '"Beda! BedaT (Mayday!
Mayday!) into his radio set before his plane crashed and
the radio transmission abruptly went dead.—

The Fool’s Errand: NSA and the 1960 U-2

Shootdown

At eight thirty-six on the morning of May 1, 1960, a
Russian SA-2 Guideline surface-to-air missile (SAM)
fired by a battery of the Fifty-seventh Anti-Aircraft
Rocket Brigade, commanded by Major Mikhail Voronov,
shot down a CIA U-2 reconnaissance aircraft piloted by
Francis Gary Powers deep inside Russia near the city of
Sverdlovsk.—

NSA was deeply involved in all aspects of Gary
Powers’s ill-fated mission. Many of the top targets that
the mission was supposed to cover had been identified by
SIGINT, including suspected Soviet intercontinental
ballistic missile (ICBM) launch sites at Polyarnyy Ural,
Yur’ya, and Verkhnyaya Saida and an alleged missile
production facility in Sverdlovsk. But one of the main
targets of Powers’s overflight mission was to confirm
reports received from NSA that the Russians were
building an ICBM launch site in northern Russia
somewhere along the Vologda-Arkhangel’sk railroad in
the vicinity of the frigid village of Plesetsk. As it turned
out, the SIGINT reporting was correct: The Russians had
begun building their first operational ICBM site at
Plesetsk in July 1957 and had completed construction in
mid- 1959. Between December 1959 and February 1960,
Norwegian listening posts in northern Norway had
intercepted Russian radio traffic suggesting that Soviet

missile activity was then being conducted at Plesetsk,
which Power’s mission was supposed to confirm.—

As with all previous U-2 overflights of the USSR, NS A
was able to monitor Soviet air defense reactions to the
mission. The man at NS A headquarters responsible for
running this operation was Henry Fenech, who headed
NSA’s Soviet Air Defense Branch. Well before Powers’s
U-2 took off from Peshawar airfield in northern Pakistan,
Fenech had become concerned about the safety of the U-2
aircraft. There were clear signs appearing in SIGINT that
the Soviet air defenses were getting better, and that they
were getting close to being able to shoot down a U-2. —
Powers’s mission did not begin well. Even before his U-
2 reached the Soviet border on May 1, intercepted Soviet
air defense tracking communications showed that his
plane had been detected and was being closely tracked by
Russian early-warning radars. While the U-2 streaked
northward into the heart of Russia, NS A intercept
operators in Karamursel, Turkey, listened intently as
Soviet radar operators continued to track the plane. Then
something went terribly wrong. The intercepts of Soviet
air defense radar tracking showed that just north of
Sverdlovsk, Powers’s aircraft descended from over sixty-
five thousand feet to somewhere between thirty thousand
and forty thousand feet, changed course to head back
toward Sverdlovsk, then disappeared completely off the
Soviet radar screens thirty-five minutes later. Fenech
could only report to the CIA that the U-2 “had been lost

due to unexplained causes.” But in a follow-up report,
Fenech’s analysts stated that based on intercepts of Soviet
radar tracking communications, they believed that
Powers’s aircraft might have been hit by the SAM at an
altitude of between thirty thousand and forty thousand
feet while descending, and not at an altitude of sixty-five
thousand feet as Powers claimed.—

The downing of the U-2 was a major diplomatic
disaster. It took place just two weeks before Eisenhower
(who had to authorize all such overflights and had very
reluctantly allowed this one — to take place no later than
May 2) was to meet with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev
for a crucial summit meeting in Geneva. Not only did the
Soviets capture Powers after he parachuted from his
doomed aircraft, but they also displayed pieces of the
latter (along with Powers) in public. The summit meeting,
like the U-2, was shot down by the Russians. And a very
unhappy Eisenhower wanted an explanation of what had
gone wrong.

Fenech’s report stirred up a hornet’s nest of
controversy, with CIA officials vehemently denying its
conclusions. But it was not until Powers returned to the
United States in February 11, 1962, after being traded for
convicted Soviet spy Rudolph Abel, that NS A “got its day
in court.” Admiral Laurence Frost — ^who had replaced
General Samford as director of NSA in November 1960 —
and his analysts attended a contentious CIA board of
inquiry, convened on February 19, at which Fenech was

grilled for hours by board member John Bross, a former
lawyer and a veteran CIA officer, about his conclusions,
and Fenech continued to insist that the intercepted Soviet
air defense tracking showed that Powers was flying much
lower than he claimed. The CIA board maintained,
however, that the Soviet radar operators had been
mistaken about the altitude. So on February 27, 1962, the
board sent a Top Secret report to CIA director John
McCone and President John Kennedy that cleared Powers
of any culpability or negligence, concluding that “the
evidence establishes overwhelmingly that Powers’
account was a truthful account.”—

Louis Tordella, NSA’s deputy director, was incensed,
telling CIA general counsel Lawrence Houston that “the
markedly hostile nature of much of the questioning
indicated that the Board had already decided on a course
of action which was not supported by the NS A produced
materials.” But the politically astute Tordella ultimately
conceded that the board had arrived at the “best” decision
— i.e., one that protected the reputation of the CIA and the
rest of the U.S. intelligence community.—

CHAPTER 5

The Crisis Y ears

SIGINT and the Kennedy Administration:

1961-1963

It may not be war, but it sure as hell ain I peace.

^MAJOR GENERAL STEVEN ARNOLD

Jack Frost’s 600 Days

On January 20, 1961, John Kennedy was sworn in as the
thirty-fifth president of the United States. His national
security advisers quickly discovered that NS A was the
most important, the largest, and the most expensive
component of the U.S. intelligence community. With a
budget of $654 million and employing 59,000 military
and civilian personnel, NS A was truly a behemoth. By
way of comparison, the CIA consisted of only 16,685
personnel, with a budget of $40 E 6 million.-
Leaders in the intelligence community had worried
about the tendency of NS A’ s director. Lieutenant General

John Samford, to focus on meeting the demands of the
Pentagon rather than on making NS A a strong national
intelligence organization. A search had been mounted to
find a successor who could do just that.-

Vice Admiral Laurence “Jack” Frost seemed to have the
requisite qualifications for the job. Quiet and soft-spoken,
Frost had replaced Samford as the director of NS A on
November 24, 1960. A native of Fayetteville, Arkansas,
Frost was a 1926 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy.
He spent his formative years in the navy as a gunnery and
communications officer, and he was in command of the
destroyer USS Greerwhen it was attacked on September
4, 1941, by a German U-boat in the North Atlantic while
on a mail run to Iceland, a seminal event that helped
propel the United States into World War II. During the
war. Frost commanded a destroyer and served as a
communications officer in the Pacific. He returned to
Washington in September 1945 and became an
intelligence officer, commanding the unit of the Office of
Naval Intelligence (ONI) that managed the navy’s
SIGINT processing and reporting efforts, then ONI’s
Intelligence Estimates Division. After more sea duty.
Frost served as NSA’s chief of staff from 1953 to 1955,
then became the director of ONI on May 16, 1956. He
remained at the helm until becoming NS A director in
1960.2

But Frost turned out to be a disaster as head of NS A.
During his twenty-month tenure, the vice admiral, used to

naval discipline and unquestioning obedience to orders,
soon found that his civilian staffers would not toe the line,
so he surrounded himself with some naval officers who
would. Senior civilian managers dubbed them the Navy
Cabal and saw Frost as a threat to their management
control over the agency. In response, his senior civilian
staff fought him on policy issues and began sabotaging
many of his initiatives behind his back.-
Frost also never developed a good rapport with the
Kennedy administration, which made it difficult for him
to protect NSA’s in dependence from the encroachment of
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and his top
deputies as well as the CIA, headed by John McCone. By
the spring of 1962, McNamara was fed up with Frost and
fired him. Today it is hard to find former NS A officials
who have anything good to say about Vice Admiral Frost.

NS A Enters the War in Vietnam

At the time the Kennedy administration entered the White
House, in January 1961, NS A was devoting few resources
to monitoring events in Asia. Of the agency’s total
SIGINT collection resources, 50 percent were devoted to
the Soviet Union, 8.4 percent to Asian communist targets,
and 7.6 percent to noncommunist countries elsewhere
around the world, which in NS A parlance were known as
the ALLO (all other) nations. The remaining 34 percent
was working staff positions and other esoteric collection

functions, such as electronic intelligence.-
The man heading NSA’s SIGINT collection operations
in the Far East was Dr. Lawrance Shinn, who had been
chief of NSA’s Office of Asiatic Communist Countries
(ACOM) since 1959. Like many of his colleagues at the
time, Larry Shinn was not a professional cryptologist. The
holder of a B.S. degree in chemistry from the University
of Chicago and a Ph.D. in bacteriology from the
University of Pittsburgh, Shinn had joined the U.S. Navy
cryptologic organization during World War II. He quickly
demonstrated a modest talent for code breaking but even
more impressive skills as a manager, which led to his
meteoric rise after the war within AFSA, then NSA.-
As of 1961, the vast majority of Shinn’s SIGINT
collection and analytic resources were focused on
mainland China, with a smaller effort targeting North
Korea. NS A had a small number of SIGINT intercept
positions at its two listening posts in the Philippines
covering North Vietnam and Viet Cong guerrilla activities
in South Vietnam, though those facilities devoted more of
their resources to China traffic. Back at Fort Meade, what
SIGINT reporting was being produced conclusively
showed that the Viet Cong insurgency was being directed
and supported by North Vietnam through a clandestine
radio network that extended from Hanoi to 1 14 Viet Cong
radio stations spread throughout South Vietnam.-
Until 1960, NSA was able to read with relative ease the

high-level diplomatic and military cipher systems of
North Vietnam. But the agency’s window into these
communications closed quickly. In the fall of that year,
the North Vietnamese began changing all of their codes to
a new unbreakable cipher system called KTB. The first
systems to “go black” were all of the high-level North
Vietnamese government and military ciphers, and over
the next two years North Vietnam converted all of the
ciphers used by its military to KTB. The first changes in
Viet Cong cipher usage came in the fall of 1961, and then
on April 14, 1962, all one-hundred-plus Viet Cong radio
transmitters in South Vietnam “executed a major, nearly
total communications and cryptographic change on their
military and political-military networks.” All high-level
North Vietnamese and Viet Cong ciphers became
unreadable to the cryptanalysts at NS A, forcing the
agency to rely, for the rest of the Vietnam War, on the
exploitation of low-level North Vietnamese and Viet
Cong cipher systems, plaintext intercepts, and traffic
analysis.-

In the summer of 1960, the increasing intensity of the
Viet Cong insurrection in South Vietnam forced the U.S.
intelligence community to devote more resources to
monitoring Viet Cong activity. Since existing security
regulations barred the United States from giving direct
SIGINT support to the South Vietnamese government, the
CIA chief of station in Taiwan, Ray Cline, was asked by
Washington to see if the Taiwanese intelligence services

“would assist the South Vietnamese in methods for
collecting intelligence, including signals interception and
the flying of clandestine missions behind enemy lines.
But the Taiwanese personnel ultimately sent to South
Vietnam spent most of their time intercepting Chinese
military radio traffic, at which they excelled, and made no
real contribution to the war effort. Efforts by the
commander of the U.S. Military Assistance Group
(MAAG) in Vietnam, Lieutenant General L. C. McGarr,
to convince the newly installed Kennedy administration
of the need to provide the South Vietnamese with SIGINT
equipment were met by stiff resistance from the U.S.
intelligence community, especially NS A, which was
naturally reluctant to provide the South Vietnamese with
sensitive American SIGINT technology.—

In March 1961, the U.S. Intelligence Board (USIB)
approved a wide range of new clandestine intelligence
collection and covert action programs, including a
classified CIA program to drop large numbers of agents
into North Vietnam, as well as a sizable expansion of
NSA’s SIGINT collection program for both Viet Cong
and North Vietnamese communications. The USIB also
approved a parallel program that authorized the ASA to
train South Vietnamese military personnel in SIGINT
collection. On April 29, 1961, President Kennedy and the
NSC approved the plan, including giving limited
intelligence information derived from SIGINT to the

South Vietnamese military.—

On May 12, 1961, McGarr, Ambassador Frederick
Nolting Jr., and the CIA’s Saigon chief of station,
William Colby, obtained South Vietnamese president Ngo
Dinh Diem’s approval to deploy American SIGINT
troops to South Vietnam. The next day, the first
contingent of ninety-three ASA personnel, calling
themselves the Third Radio Research Unit under the
command of Lieutenant Colonel William Cochrane, flew
into Tan Son Nhut Air Base outside Saigon and moved its
Morse intercept operators into vans parked alongside the
runways. Their presence was to be kept top secret. The
army SIGINT troops wore civilian clothes and were
barred from carrying military ID cards in order to provide
cover, which must have deceived very few, since all of
them wore sidearms and carried M-1 rifles everywhere
they went. For additional cover, their medical records
were stamped, “If injured or killed in combat, report as
training accident in the Philippines.”— To preserve
security as well as cover, Washington tactfully declined to
give in to the South Vietnamese government and
military’s demands for full access to the unit’s operations
spaces and the intelligence information that it produced.—
But as of the fall of 1961, the SIGINT effort was
producing virtually no hard intelligence about the
strength, capabilities, and activities of the Viet Cong
guerrillas in South Vietnam. A Top Secret November

1961 report to the White House by General Maxwell
Taylor recommended that NS A “adjust its priorities of
effort and allocations of personnel and material, both in
Washington and Vietnam, as required to break Viet Cong
communications codes.” His findings, coupled with the
rapidly deteriorating military situation in South Vietnam,
led President Kennedy to authorize yet another dramatic
increase in the number of American troops and advisers in
South Vietnam. As part of the buildup, an additional 279
ASA personnel were ordered to be deployed to South
Vietnam by January 14, 1962, to augment the Third Radio
Research Unit.—

Operation Mongoose

Pursuant to a November 30, 1961, directive from
Kennedy, the CIA began planning a large-scale covert
operation called Mongoose, whose purpose was to
overthrow the Fidel Castro regime in Cuba through a
combination of guerrilla attacks by CIA-trained Cuban
exiles and the judicious use of political, economic, and
psychological warfare.— This regime change plan
naturally had the full support of the Pentagon and the U.S.
intelligence community, with the chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff going so far as to write, “The United
States cannot tolerate [the] permanent existence of a
communist government in the Western Hemisphere.”—
Between January and March 1962, all branches of the

U.S. intelligence community, including NS A, were tasked
with increased coverage of Cuba to support the CIA’s
Mongoose covert action operations. NSA’s initial
intelligence collection effort was relatively small. Then, in
response to White House demands that “special
intelligence [i.e., SIGINT] assets be exploited more
fiilly,” the agency sent a plan to Secretary of Defense
McNamara in November 1961, calling for additional
intercept positions to monitor Cuban communications.
This required placing the newly commissioned NS A spy
ship USS Oxfordoff the northern coast of Cuba and hiring
a dozen anticommunist Cuban exiles to translate the
intercepted message traffic. This plan and another, more
expansive version submitted in February 1962 were
quickly approved by McNamara.—

Juanita Morris Moody, chief of the Office of Non-
Communist Nations (Bl), had the responsibility of
running SIGINT collection operations against Cuba. As a
woman holding a senior management position, with no
college degree or advanced technical background, she was
a rarity in that era at NS A. Bom in Morven, North
Carolina, she attended Western Carolina College in 1942-
1943 but never graduated. She left school in April 1943
and volunteered to join the war effort. Within a month,
she found herself assigned to SSA at Arlington Hall
Station as a code clerk. While waiting for her security
clearance to come through, she took a number of
unclassified courses in cryptanalysis, in which she

demonstrated her flair for code breaking, and she
subsequently excelled in breaking complex cipher
systems, such as a high-level German one-time pad cipher
system. By the end of the war, she had risen from code
clerk to office head. At the urging of her supervisor, she
decided to stay on with the ASA. In only three years, she
advanced to the position of chief of operations for one of
ASA’s most important operational units. In subsequent
years, she headed a number of important operational units
at NS A, including the division that specialized in the
solution of Soviet manual cipher systems.—

Much of NS A’ s early effort against Cuba was driven by
the intelligence requirements of the CIA, not only for its
own analytic purposes but also to support Operation
Mongoose.— For example, declassified documents show
that the CIA’s Clandestine Service was anxious to detect
dissension within the Castro regime or the Cuban
populace through NSA’s monitoring of Cuban police and
internal security force communications.— In February
1962, a small team of SIGINT analysts belonging to ASA
were sent to the CIA’s newly opened interrogation center
at Opa-Locka, Florida, the Caribbean Admissions Center,
to gather intelligence information needed to support the
SIGINT effort against Cuba by interrogating Cuban
refugees and defectors.— Then there were the
requirements of the FBI, which in 1962 wanted NS A to
send it copies of all Western Union telegrams between the

United States and Cuba, particularly those that identified
which U.S. companies were still doing business with
Cuba or revealed the names of Americans traveling there
illegally.—

NS A began diverting collection resources from other
targets in order to cover Cuba. By April 1962, the number
of NS A radio intercept positions dedicated to copying
Cuban radio traffic had increased from thirteen to thirty-
five, and the number of intelligence analysts and reporters
working on the Cuban mission at NS A headquarters at
Fort Meade had risen to eighty-three personnel. The
number of aerial SIGINT collection flights around Cuba
was dramatically increased, and in February 1962 the
USS OxfordmSidQ another visit to the international waters
off Havana to monitor Cuban communications traffic. The
presence of the Oxford, with its 116 U.S. Navy SIGINT
operators, outside Havana harbor so infuriated the Cuban
government that on February 22, 1962, Fidel Castro
publicly charged that the Oxfordhsid violated Cuban
territorial waters, and he handed out to journalists grainy
photos of the antenna-studded ship, which could be seen
clearly as it cruised nearby.—

NSA’s SIGINT production on Cuba quickly dwarfed
the reporting coming from all other agencies. During the
six-month period from April 1962 to October 1962, NS A
provided fifty-seven hundred reports on what was going
on inside Cuba.— Intercepts in April and May confirmed

that the Cubans were receiving new Soviet-made radars,
part of the rapid construction of a modem air defense
system. In June, NS A reported that MiG-21 fighters, the
most modem Soviet-made jets, were in Cuba. At the same
time, American radio intercept operators in southern
Florida caught Russians talking in heavily accented
Spanish on Cuban air force radio frequencies, teaching
Cuban pilots and ground controllers fighter interception
tactics. By July 1962, SIGINT showed that the Cuban
MiG fighters were now routinely conducting ground-
controlled intercept (GCI) air defense exercises, and on
two occasions NS A intercept operators in southern
Florida detected Cuban MiG fighters intercepting
intmding aircraft, probably CIA resupply planes, clear
evidence that the Cuban air force was fast becoming
combat ready.—

By mid- July 1962, Secretary McNamara had become
quite concerned about these capabilities, as well as about
intelligence reports indicating the presence of Soviet
military advisers on the island. NS A concurred and once
again requested permission from the Pentagon to divert
collection resources from other targets in order to
augment its SIGINT coverage of Cuba. In his response,
on July 16, McNamara ordered NS A to dramatically
increase its coverage as “a matter of the highest
urgency.”—

NS A had one hugely important asset, which allowed it
to listen in on what was happening inside Cuba — it could

tap right into the Cuban national telephone system. This
was possible because the American telecommunications
giant RCA International had built the system in 1957, and
it used a vulnerable microwave relay system rather than
invulnerable landlines to carry virtually all telephone
traffic between Havana and all major towns and cities in
Cuba.—

Miffed by the seizure of its Cuban holdings by Castro’s
government in 1959, RCA willingly provided the CIA
and NS A with the schematics of the Cuban
communications system as well as details about the
operating parame ters of the equipment. But in 1960, the
Soviets began to replace the American-made equipment
with Russian communications and cryptographic
equipment as part of their military aid program to Cuba.
NS A estimated that it would take the Cuban government
about two years to phase out the American equipment and
replace it with the Russian equipment, by which time, it
was believed, the lack of spare parts and poor
maintenance would take its toll on the latter, forcing the
Cubans to continue to use the American-built
communications network for the foreseeable future. They
were right.—

To intercept the Cuban telephone traffic, NS A needed to
park a ship equipped with special intercept equipment off
the Cuban coast. So on July 19, 1962, the USS Ox^br^was
diverted from a scheduled cruise around Latin America
and ordered to proceed at flank speed to undertake

another intelligence-gathering cruise around Cuba.— The
OxybrJarrived off the northern coast of Cuba on July 21
and began to cruise at a leisurely five knots within its
assigned operations area in international waters twelve
miles off Havana and the port of Mariel, monitoring
Cuban communications traffic and radar emissions. The
Oxford'^ most productive target was the easily intercepted
message traffic sent over the Cuban microwave telephone
network.—

On July 31, a Cuban navy patrol boat circled the
Oxfordx^hilQ crewmen photographed the ship. Electronic
intelligence (ELINT) operators aboard the
OxybrJnervously watched as the Cubans used their shore-
based surveillance radars to continuously track the ship’s
movements and no doubt associated its position relative to
the sites of contemporaneous CIA Operation Mongoose
commando raids along the Cuban coastline. On August
30, Cuban newspapers prominently reported on the
presence of the Oxfordoff the Cuban coast. Observers
standing on the Malecon seawall around Havana harbor
could, once again, clearly see the spy ship as it slowly
cruised back and forth just outside Cuban territorial
waters.—

Change in Command

After its disastrous experience with Admiral Laurence
Frost, the Pentagon selected a fifty-two-year-old U.S. Air

Force communications officer with little intelligence
experience named Lieutenant General Gordon Blake to
head up NS A. But his past experience might well have
sold him on the importance of SIGINT. On the morning
of December 7, 1941, Blake was serving as the base
operations officer at Hickham Field, in Hawaii, when the
Japa nese attacked Pearl Harbor. He was awarded the
Silver Star for gallantry for his actions during the attack.
After World War II, Blake held a series of command
positions on the air staff in Washington, where he helped
plan the Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line radar
network across Alaska and Canada. In 1961, he was
named commander of the Continental Air Defense
Command, attaining the rank of lieutenant general on
October 1, 1961, and he remained there until being named
NS A director on July 1, 1962.—

It was a precarious time for NS A. The agency was still
battered by the bad feelings generated by Frost’s
contentious relationship with Robert McNamara’s
Pentagon. Frost and Blake had been friends since World
War II, which helped ease the transition somewhat, but
Blake later confessed that he “felt badly about coming in
over [Frost’s] prostrate form.”—

Blake was to serve as the director of NS A for three
years, until May 31, 1965. His impact on the agency,
though little publicized, was important and far-reaching.
He was at the helm during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis,
and he managed the agency during a period of dramatic

expansion brought on by the war in Vietnam. NSA’s
personnel numbers and budget figures reached record
highs under his command, and he was instrumental in
getting funding for an intensified research and
development program needed to develop new SIGINT
collection and computerized processing systems.
Personable and easygoing, Blake went out of his way to
try to forge closer links between NS A and the Pentagon,
developing a close working relationship with Frost’s
archnemesis. Assistant Secretary of Defense John Rubel,
and his successor (and a future secretary of state during
the Carter administration), Cyrus Vance. Blake also
restored a more harmonious relationship with the CIA and
patched up NSA’s virtually non existent relationship with
the National Reconnaissance Office, which Frost had left
in tatters because of a fight over NSA’s lack of control
over SIGINT satellite collection. By the time Blake
departed, NS A had eclipsed all other agencies comprising
the U.S. intelligence community, with SIGINT becoming
the “predominant source” used by American intelligence
analysts and policy makers. — But the outcome of the
struggle for control of future increasingly sensitive
SIGINT satellites and amazingly high-resolution
reconnaissance satellites would be crucial to NSA’s
maintaining intelligence primacy.

Monitoring the Russian Surge

It was not until the first in a new flow of Soviet cargo and
passenger ships headed for Cuba in mid- July 1962 that
NS A intelligence analysts concluded that something
unusual was happening. NS A routinely intercepted all
Soviet naval and commercial shipping radio traffic in the
North Atlantic in conjunction with GCHQ in Britain and
the Canadian SIGINT agency, the Communications
Branch of the National Research Council (CBNRC). As a
result, virtually everything that the U.S. intelligence
community knew about Soviet shipments of men,
weapons, and material to Cuba came from SIGINT. The
importance of this NS A coverage to the CIA was so high
that, as a report prepared by the CIA notes, “SIGINT
provided information on daily positions, tonnages,
destinations, and cargoes, as well as Soviet attempts to
deny or falsify this information. On sailings from the
Baltic, SIGINT often provided the initial information.”—
The first indication that something untoward was
occurring resulted from the analysis of the manifests for
these ships, which NS A was routinely intercepting.
Beginning on July 15, fully laden Soviet cargo ships
began sailing for Cuba from Russian ports in the Black
Sea. As they passed through the Dardanelles strait, the
captains of these merchant ships gave false declarations to
Turkish authorities in Istanbul as to their destinations and
the cargoes they were carrying. They also lied about the
cargoes’ weight, which was well below what the ships
were capable of carrying. NS A analysts at Fort Meade

quickly figured out that the false declarations indicated
that the ships were secretly carrying military cargoes.—

Declassified intelligence reports show that in July 1962,
NS A detected twenty-one Russian merchant ships
docking in Cuba, including four passenger ships, which
was a single-month record for Soviet ships docking in
Cuba. Among the passenger ships detected by NS A as
soon as they left Russian ports were the Maria
Ulyanovadind the Latvia, which brought key staff
components of the Soviet Group of Forces to Cuba. In
August, NS A detected thirty-seven Soviet merchant ships,
eleven tankers, and six passenger ships docking in Cuba.
Little intelligence was available about what exactly the
Russians were shipping there until mid-August, when
imagery analysts at ONI identified crates for Komar
missile patrol boats sitting on the deck of a Soviet
merchant ship on its way to Cuba. In September, forty-six
Soviet merchant ships were detected docking in Cuba by
SIGINT, along with thirteen tankers and four passenger
ships.—

These ships secretly carried thousands of Russian air
defense troops and construction workers to Cuba. Despite
attempts to disguise the newly arrived Russian troops in
Cuba as civilian “agricultural technicians,” refugees and
defectors who found their way to Miami told their CIA
interrogators that these “agricultural technicians” were
young, wore matching civilian clothing, had military
haircuts, marched in formation, and carried themselves

like soldiers. In late July, the Russian military
construction personnel had begun building launch sites
for six SA-2 Guideline surface-to-air missile (SAM)
regiments, whose 144 missile launchers were to be
deployed throughout Cuba. The first SA-2 SAM sites
were concentrated in the San Cristobal area, in western
Cuba. By the end of August, construction on the first SA-
2 SAM site had been completed. —

Recently declassified documents reveal that despite the
preponderance of evidence from SIGINT that these Soviet
cargo ships were carrying weapons to Cuba, the Pentagon
and its intelligence arm, the Defense Intelligence Agency
(DIA), refused to accept this interpretation of the
intelligence material. DIA’s performance during the
Cuban Missile Crisis was, according to the CIA,
disgraceful. For instance, DIA blocked an attempt by the
CIA to insert an item in the August 3, 1962, edition of the
Central Intelligence Bulletinnoting that “an unusual
number of suspected arms carriers were enroute to Cuba.”
A watered-down version of this report was carried the
next day, but in the month that followed, DIA blocked
four more attempts by CIA analysts to publish reports that
the Russians were shipping weapons to Cuba, with DIA
analysts taking the following position: “The high volume
of shipping probably reflects planned increases in trade
between the USSR and Cuba.” As late as the end of
August, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General
Maxwell Taylor, was telling President Kennedy that the

surge in Soviet shipping traffic to Cuba “reflected an
increased flow of economic aid” rather than weapons.
DIA did not acknowledge that the Soviets were sending
large quantities of weapons until September 6, a week
after a U-2 reconnaissance mission confirmed that
Russian-made SA-2 SAMs were operational in Cuba.—

On August 20, 1962, CIA director John McCone wrote

a memorandum to President Kennedy reporting that a

significant and worrisome surge in the number of Soviet

merchant ships docking in Cuba had been detected and

that an accumulation of human intelligence (HUMINT)

reports strongly indicated that a contingent of about five

thousand Russian troops was now in Cuba. The memo

incorporated intelligence that had been received from the

French intelligence service’s chief of station in

Washington, Thyraud de Vosjoli, who had just returned

from a visit to Havana. According to de Vosjoli, between

four thousand and six thousand Soviet military personnel

had arrived in Cuba since July 1, 1962, although no

Russian military units per se were included in this
40

group.—

Intelligence information regarding the shipments was
passed to the Special Group at a meeting at the State
Department on August 21, and President Kennedy was
briefed at the White House the following day.
Confirmation of these reports by U-2 aerial
reconnaissance was immediately ordered.— On August

23, NS A reported that nineteen Soviet freighters or
passenger ships were then en route to Cuba, most of
which appeared to be carrying weapons.— The next day,
the CIA issued another intelligence report based on
HUMINT, noting that on August 5-6 large numbers of
Soviet personnel and equipment had arrived at the Cuban
ports of Trinidad and Casilda, and that the Soviet
personnel and equipment had departed from the ports in
large convoys in the direction of the town of Sancti
Spiritus.—

But it was not until the U-2 reconnaissance overflight of
Cuba conducted on August 29 that the U.S. intelligence
community received confirmation of the presence of
Soviet-made SAMs in Cuba. The U-2 found a total of
eight SA-2 Guideline SAM sites in various stages of
construction throughout western Cuba, as well as five
MiG-21 crates being unpacked at San Antonio de los
Banos Air Base outside Havana, guided missile patrol
boats, and the construction site of a coastal defense cruise
missile basenear the port of Banes in eastern Cuba. A
report sent to McCone noted ominously that more
Russian-made military equipment was on its way to Cuba,
with SIGINT confirming that sixteen Russian freighters
were then en route, ten of which were definitely carry-ing
military equipment.—

At this critical juncture, disaster struck. NSA’s ability to
generate intelligence about the cargoes being carried by

Soviet shipping to and from Cuba was publicly revealed
by the State Department, in an effort to generate negative
publicity about the increasing volume of Soviet weapons
shipments to third world countries, such as Indonesia and
Cuba. The CIA complained in a memo that State had
released information “covered by this classification [Top
Secret Codeword]. Said material appeared in part in the
Washington Po^/within 12 hours of the time we gave it to
State.” The result of the unauthorized release was
devastating. By mid- September, NSA had lost its ability
to provide the U.S. intelligence community with details
concerning what weapons Soviet merchant ships were
carrying to these countries.—

The September Buildup

The U-2’s discovery of SA-2 SAMs in Cuba on August
29 shocked the White House and set off alarm bells
throughout the entire U.S. intelligence community.

The subsequent discovery of the Soviet surface-to-
surface coastal defense missile site at Banes marked the
beginning of a concerted effort by the entire U.S.
intelligence community, including NSA, to try to find any
indications that the Russians had deployed, or intended to
deploy, offensive nuclear weapons to Cuba. But an NSA
study of the Cuban Missile Crisis states unequivocally
that “signals intelligence did ^o/provide any direct
information about the Soviet introduction of offensive

missiles into Cuba.”— The comprehensive security
measures that the Soviets used to hide the shipment and
placement of offensive ballistic missiles worked
completely. An NS A history ruefully admits, “Soviet
communications security was almost perfect.”—

Across the Straits of Florida in Cuba, Major General
Igor Dem’yanovich Statsenko, the commander of the
Soviet missile forces there, was busy trying to get his
nuclear-armed missiles operational. Construction of the
missile launch sites had begun in August 1962, but it was
not until mid-September that the Soviet merchant ships
Poltavadind Om^A:arrived in Cuba carrying in their holds
thirty-six SS-4 medium-range ballistic missiles and their
launchers. After their arrival, Soviet personnel moved
sixteen of the missile launchers to four sites around the
town of San Cristdbal, while eight more were deployed to
two sites around the town of Sagua la Grande, in central
Cuba.— The Soviet military went to extraordinary lengths
to deny NS A access to any form of communications
traffic that might have given away the deployment of
Soviet troops and missiles to Cuba. Communications
between Moscow and the Russian merchant ships at sea
and Soviet troops in Cuba were handled by the Soviet
merchant marine, with each ship reporting every morning
to Moscow on its location and status using a special one-
time cipher system that NS A could not crack. During the
early phase of the Russian deployment to Cuba, all

communications between Russian field units and the
Soviet headquarters at Managua, outside Havana, were
oral and delivered personally — never by radio or
telephone. Other than a few start-up tests of their
communications equipment, the Russian troops in Cuba
maintained strict radio silence until October in order to
defeat the American listening posts located seventy miles
away in southern Florida.—

Having found no sign whatsoever of Soviet offensive
weapons in Cuba, by late September CIA intelligence
analysts had concluded, on the basis of the SIGINT they
were getting from Juanita Moody’s B1 shop at Fort
Meade, plus collateral material from other intelligence
sources outside of NS A, that the Soviets were only
engaged in an effort to establish, on a crash basis, modern
Soviet-style air defense and coastal defense systems in
Cuba.—

On these subjects, NS A was continuing to produce
plentiful amounts of high-quality intelligence, almost
entirely based on intercepts of Cuban radio traffic and
telephone calls, the most useful dealing with Cuban air
force activity, including MiG training flights.— SIGINT
reporting coming out of NS A took on an ominous tone
when the agency reported that on September 8 two Cuban
MiG fighters had attempted to intercept two U.S. Navy
patrol aircraft flying in international airspace off the coast
of Cuba.— In late September, NS A reported that Cuban

MiG fighters were now routinely challenging American
reconnaissance aircraft flying off the coast of Cuba, and
that multiple intercepts clearly showed that the ground
controllers directing the Cuban fighters to their targets
were Russians.—

NS A was also producing a fair amount of intelligence
reporting on the operational readiness of Soviet SA-2
SAMs in Cuba and the overall readiness of the Cuban air
defense system. The first radar signal, from an SA-2 SAM
site three miles west of the port of Mariel, was intercepted
on September 15, 1962, although NSA’s intercept
operators could not find any radio traffic servicing the
SAM sites. Five days later, a Fan Song radar tracking
signal from another SA-2 SAM site in the Havana-Mariel
area was intercepted, indicating that at least one of the
twelve SAM sites in Cuba had become operational.—

NS A was also continuing to maintain a close watch on
Russian merchant shipping traffic between the Soviet
Union and Cuba. On September 13, CIA director McCone
reported to the White House that according to COMINT
and collateral maritime surveillance data, there were at
least twenty-six Russian merchant ships on the high seas
headed for Cuba.— On September 17, the CIA reported
that since late July, Russian passenger ships had made
nine unscheduled and unpublicized round-trips to Cuba,
and that two more Russian passenger ships were then en
route there. The CIA estimated that these ships carried

some forty-two hundred Russian military technicians.—
On September 25, NS A reported that another thirteen
Soviet merchant ships had been confirmed by COMINT
as being en route to Cuba.—

Then in late September, the first indications began to
appear in NSA’s intelligence reporting that there were
Soviet military personnel in Cuba above and beyond the
trainers and military advisers that the Russians had
maintained in Cuba since 1960. A declassified study of
the Cuban Missile Crisis notes, “An intercept of the
Soviet Air Force link in Hungary on 14 September stated
that ‘volunteers for the defense of Cuba’ ” were expected
to “hand in applications [to volunteer].” Another message
on the same link requested the number of volunteers who
had applied. Similar intercepted calls for volunteers went
out to Soviet military units stationed in Eastern Europe.—

The Missiles of October

On Thursday, October 4, 1962, Attorney General Robert
Kennedy convened a special meeting of the team of CIA
and other U.S. government officials who were running
Operation Mongoose. Bobby Kennedy lit into the
assembled officials, telling them that he had just
discussed the efforts to unseat Castro with his brother.
President Kennedy, who was “dissatisfied with [the] lack
of action in the sabotage field” inside Cuba. The attorney
general was angry that “nothing was moving forward”

and demanded that the CIA redouble its efforts to cause
havoc inside Cuba.—

Against this backdrop, NS A continued to plug away at
what it could hear inside Cuba. On October 8, General
Blake told Secretary McNamara that NSA was making
excellent progress in its efforts to exploit Soviet and
Cuban communications traffic inside Cuba.— The next
day, an air force radio intercept unit in southern Florida
intercepted the first Cuban radar tracking broadcasts,
which indicated that the Cuban radar network and air
surveillance system was now operational.— On October
10, NSA reported that Cuban radar stations had just begun
passing radar tracking data to higher headquarters and to
the various MiG air bases in Cuba in exactly the same
manner as the Soviet air defense system.— And on
October 11, NSA reported that thirteen more Soviet cargo
ships were en route to Cuba.—

But on October 14, everything changed literally
overnight. A CIA U-2 reconnaissance aircraft conducted a
high-altitude overflight of Cuba and brought back the first
clear pictures of six Russian SS-4 medium-range ballistic
missiles at a launch site outside the town of San
Cristobal.— NSA played no part in launching this recon
mission. Declassified documents show that it was a
combination of CIA agent sources inside Cuba and
interrogations of refugees in Florida that triggered the
flight.— As incredible as it may sound, on October 1 6, the

same day that President Kennedy and his top policy
advisers were briefed on the presence of Soviet ballistic
missiles in Cuba, Attorney General Kennedy, in a meeting
at the Justice Department, again lambasted the men
running Operation Mongoose. Opening the meeting by
telling them of the “general dissatisfaction of the
President” with their progress (or lack thereof ), he
announced that he was taking personal command of
Mongoose to ensure that operations against Cuba were
stepped up dramatically.—

At Fort Meade, the discovery of the SS-4 missiles in
Cuba led to a week of unadulterated hell for the
intelligence analysts. Every one of the agency’s
consumers was screaming for more information on the
missiles in Cuba. “I could not believe all the demands for
information that were coming in from everywhere,” a
former manager who worked in Juanita Moody’s office
recalled. “The U-2 had just discovered the damned
missiles inside Cuba, and everyone expected us to have
somewhere in our filing cabinets the answers to why they
were there, what their targets were, how were they
protected . . . But we had nothing in our files, zip, which
was very hard for us to admit.”—

To handle the massive new workload, on October 19 the
head of NSA’s Production Directorate, Major General
John Davis, transferred over one hundred veteran Russian
linguists and intelligence analysts from Herbert Conley’s
A Group, which handled the “Soviet problem,” to

Moody’s office. Among them was Lieutenant Colonel
Paul Odonovich, the deputy chief of the Office of Soviet
Ground Forces Problems, who was ordered to take charge
of Moody’s Latin American Division, which was
responsible for Cuba. Odonovich was not happy about his
new job because, as he later admitted, he “didn’t know
[Cuba] from scratch.” After the arrival of Odonovich and
the dozens of analysts sent down from A Group’s offices
on the third floor of the NS A operations building, all of
the elderly ladies who had run the Cuban shop since the
end of World War II “kind of disappeared and went off to
the side,” recalled Harold Parish, one of the newly arrived
A Group analysts.—

The OxybrJwas ordered to remain on station,
monitoring Cuban internal telephone traffic around the
clock. The USAF was ordered to increase the number of
airborne reconnaissance missions it was flying off the
coast of Cuba to monitor the rising volume of Soviet and
Cuban air force and air defense radio traffic.—

But despite the added staff and increased collection
resources at their disposal, Odonovich’ s analysts were
still unable to find any communications links coming
from inside Cuba that could be clearly identified as
supporting the Russian ballistic missiles, which was what
U.S. war planners desperately needed if they were ordered
by the White House to destroy the Soviet missile
launchers. This lack of success meant that the U.S.
Intelligence Board’s Guided Missile and Astronautics

Intelligence Committee was compelled to report to
President Kennedy and his advisers on October 18 and 19
that the command-and-control communications links for
the Soviet ballistic missiles in Cuba had “not yet been
found.”—

Senior U.S. military commanders, who were preparing
air strikes against military targets inside Cuba, were also
asking NS A for any information about whether the air
defense system in Cuba had become operational. When
Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Taylor asked CIA
director McCone at a White House meeting on October
18 whether NSA had detected any electronic emissions
from the Soviet SA-2 SAM radars in Cuba, the answer he
got was a qualified no, although the CIA’s analysts
believed that some of the SAMs in Cuba would become
operational in a week. Unfortunately, this guesstimate
was wrong. The very next day, an American
reconnaissance aircraft orbiting off the northern coast of
Cuba intercepted emissions from a Russian Fan Song
radar associated with the SA-2 SAM — the first of the
Soviet SAM air defense sites was now operational.
General Taylor had to bring the bad news to President
Kennedy.—

On October 21, the day before Kennedy publicly
announced the presence of Soviet ballistic missiles in
Cuba, NSA’s General Davis declared a formal SIGINT
alert, SIGINT Readiness Condition BRAVO, the
equivalent of the U.S. military’s DEFCON-2 . Moody and

Odonovich shifted immediately to a sleepless 24-7 work
schedule. For the next several weeks, nobody went home
except to shower or occasionally catch a meal before
heading back to their office in the Ops 1 building at Fort
Meade. Even that was a rarity. Odonovich recalled, “For
six weeks I never had supper at home, everything was
sent up here.” Moody said that she managed to catch a
few hours of sleep every day on a cot that was set up in
her office. When General Blake came to her and asked if
he could help, she requested some additional staff to bear
the crushing workload. The next thing she heard was
Blake on the telephone talking to off-duty employees:
“This is Gordon Blake calling for Mrs. Moody. Could you
come in to work now?”—

Maximum Effort

At seven p.m. on Monday, October 22, 1962, President
Kennedy, in a nationally televised broadcast, informed the
American people that the Soviet Union had placed
offensive nuclear-armed missiles in Cuba that were
capable of striking targets throughout most of the United
States. The president also declared an immediate
quarantine of Cuba and ordered the U.S. Navy to stop and
search any ships suspected of carrying weapons there. At
the same moment that Kennedy began his speech, all U.S.
armed forces around the world went to DEFCON-3 alert
status. For the next two days, the world seemed to teeter

on the brink of nuclear disaster.

October 23 was a day that no one who was then
working at NS A would ever forget. Within hours of
Kennedy’s speech, the Russian military forces in Cuba
began to communicate openly among themselves and
with Moscow.— Shortly after midnight on the morning of
October 23, NS A detected two high-level enciphered
radioteletype links carrying communications traffic for
the first time between the Soviet Union and a Russian
military radio station in Cuba located near the town of
Bauta, outside Havana. The first link appeared to be
primarily associated with Russian naval radio traffic,
while the second link, the analysts concluded, was
reserved for high-level communications between Moscow
and the commander of the Soviet forces in Cuba.— At
almost the same time, a Soviet air defense radio network
inside Cuba suddenly appeared on the airwaves, which
intercepts showed linked the commander of the Soviet air
defense forces in Havana with all Soviet radar stations,
SA-2 Guideline SAM sites, and AAA batteries throughout
Cuba.— NS A also intercepted a high-precedence message
from the Soviet air force headquarters in Moscow asking
if the navigational beacons at a number of Soviet
strategic-bomber dispersal bases in the Arctic were in
proper working order. The intercept caused chills in
Washington, because the Russians never deployed
strategic bombers to the Arctic dispersal bases except for

exercises or during periods of heightened alert, and this
was definitely not an exercise.— There was also a sudden
and dramatic increase in Cuban military radio traffic
immediately following the president’s speech, with one
intercepted message confirmed that the Cuban armed
forces had just been placed on the “highest degree of
alert.”—

At one fifty-seven a.m., the Morse intercept operators at
the U.S. Navy listening post in Cheltenham, Maryland,
intercepted the first of a series of high-precedence
messages sent by the Soviet merchant marine’s main
radio station, outside Odesa, to each of the twenty-two
Soviet merchant ships or tankers heading for Cuba. The
messages were apparently a warning for the ship captains
to stand by to receive an extremely important message
from Moscow. Twenty-five minutes later, at two twenty-
two a.m., the intercept operators heard the first Morse
code preamble of a high-priority enciphered message
being sent from Moscow to all twenty-two ships. After
finishing copying the lengthy message, the intercept
operators immediately put it on the teletype and sent it to
NS A headquarters at Fort Meade to see if the analysts
could read it. Unfortunately, NSA’s cryptanalysts could
not read the cipher used with the message, but given that
this particular cipher system was only used in
emergencies, it appeared that whatever Moscow had told
the Russian ships approaching the quarantine line that the
U.S. Navy was manning around Cuba was important. So

the American, Canadian, and British radio intercept
operators at listening posts around the Atlantic periphery,
together with the intelligence analysts at Fort Meade, got
themselves ready for what they knew was going to be a
very eventful day to come.—

They did not have long to wait. Starting at about five
a.m., NSA’s listening posts situated around the periphery
of the Soviet Union began reporting that the level of
Soviet military communications traffic throughout Russia
and Eastern Europe was rising rapidly, indicating that the
Soviet military had moved to a higher alert status. That
afternoon, the U.S. Navy listening post in Key West,
Florida, intercepted an order from the commander of
Cuban naval forces instructing patrol boats to
immediately take up patrol stations off the eastern Cuban
coast at Banes and Santiago Bay.—

As the day progressed, the two dozen or so U.S. Navy,
British, and Canadian direction-finding stations ringing
the Atlantic continuously monitored every radio
transmission going to or from the twenty- two Soviet
merchant ships approaching the Cuba quarantine line, in
order to track the movements of the Russian ships. By
twelve noon, the U.S. Navy’s direction-finding stations
began reporting to NS A that their tracking data indicated
that some of the Russian merchant ships had stopped dead
in the water, and that it seemed that at least eight of the
ships had reversed course and were headed back toward
Russia. The SIGINT data, however, had not yet been

confirmed by visual observation, so ONI did not forward
the information to the White House, the Pentagon, or the
CIA.S2

The information about the Soviet ships would have
certainly affected the discussion at a six p.m. meeting at
the White House between President Kennedy and his
national security advisers. As far as an increasingly
apprehensive Kennedy and his advisers knew, the Soviet
merchant ships were all still sailing straight for Cuba. But
thanks to NS A, the president knew that something was
afoot. Attorney General Kennedy later wrote in his
memoirs, “During the course of this meeting, we learned
that an extraordinary number of coded messages had been
sent to all the Russian ships on their way to Cuba. What
they said we did not know then, nor do we know now, but
it was clear that the ships as of that moment were still
straight on course.”—

Later that evening, the director of ONI, Rear Admiral
Vernon Lowrance, was informed of the latest intelligence
about the courses of the Soviet merchant ships
approaching Cuba, but for reasons not easily explained he
decided not to inform the White House, the Pentagon, or
the CIA until the reports had been verified by U.S. Navy
warships and reconnaissance aircraft. CIA director
McCone was awakened in the middle of the night by a
telephone call from the CIA duty officer and was told that
ONI was sitting on unconfirmed intelligence indicating
that the Russian freighters had turned about before

reaching the quarantine line.—

Wednesday, October 24, did not start well. At two thirty
a.m. the Morse intercept operators at Cheltenham and
other intercept stations began picking up the first parts of
an extremely urgent message being sent from the Soviet
merchant fleet’s primary radio station at Odesa to all
twenty-two Soviet cargo vessels and tankers sailing
toward Cuba. A few minutes after the message ended, the
captains of the Soviet vessels received another message
from Odesa telling them that from that point onward “all
orders would come from Moscow.”—

At about the same time that this was happening, U.S.
Navy listening posts picked up a series of burst radio
transmissions from Moscow to a number of Soviet
submarines operating in the North Atlantic, along with the
replies from the submarines themselves. A “burst
transmission” is one in which the message is compressed
electronically and the information packed into the “burst”
takes only seconds to be transmitted and received. NS A
had been tracking the radio transmissions of these
submarines since September 27, when SIGINT detected
four Soviet Foxtrot-class attack submarines departing
Northern Fleet naval bases on the Kola Peninsula for what
was then thought to be a naval exercise in the Barents
Sea.— But three weeks later, the subs reappeared. Not in
the Barents Sea, but several hundreds of miles to the
south, in the North Atlantic, escorting the Soviet merchant

vessels approaching Cuba. Although NS A could not
unscramble the transmissions, by examining the taped
signals and direction-finding data, a team of analysts in
NSA’s Soviet Submarine Division headed by a talented
cryptanalyst. Lieutenant Norman Klar, were able to
ascertain that there were three or four Russian attack
submarines operating in close proximity to the Soviet
ships.—

At nine a.m., ONI finally informed the chief of naval
operations. Admiral George Anderson, that preliminary
direction-finding data coming from NS A indicated that
some of the Russian merchant ships in the North Atlantic
had either stopped dead in the water or reversed course.
As incredible as it may sound, Anderson decided notio
tell Secretary McNamara of this new intelligence for the
same reason given earlier by Rear Admiral Lowrence of
ONI — it had not been confirmed by visual sightings. A
declassified Top Secret U.S. Navy history of the Cuban
Missile Crisis states, “About 0900Q, [Secretary of
Defense McNamara] received a standard merchant ship
briefing. At the same time. Flag Plot in the Pentagon
received the first directional fix report that some Soviet
vessels bound for Cuba had reversed course. This
information was inconclusive and Mr. McNamara was not
informed.”S6

At President Kennedy’s ten a.m. meeting at the White
House with his senior national security advisers, the news
delivered by CIA director McCone was not good. New U-

2 imagery showed that the Russians had accelerated their
work on completing the ballistic missile sites in Cuba, and
the latest intelligence showed that twenty-two Russian
merchant ships were still steaming toward the quarantine
line. Inside the USSR and Eastern Europe, all indications
appearing in SIGINT showed that the Russians were still
bringing some but not all of their military forces to a
higher state of readiness. NS A intercepts showed that
Soviet air force flight activity was at normal peacetime
levels, although Soviet strategic bomber flight activity
was significantly below normal operating levels, and there
were additional indications that the Russians were about
to deploy a unit of strategic bombers to Arctic forward
staging bases. Earlier that morning, a U.S. Navy listening
post in southern Florida intercepted a directive from
Cuban armed forces headquarters in Havana to all Cuban
air defense units instructing them not to fire on American
aircraft flying over Cuban airspace except in self-
defense.—

It was not until noon that Admiral Anderson finally told
Secretary McNamara that the latest direction-finding
tracking data coming out of NS A had revealed that
fourteen of the twenty-two Soviet merchant ships bound
for Cuba had suddenly reversed course after receiving
extended high-precedence enciphered radio transmissions
from Moscow. By the end of the day, SIGINT and aerial
surveillance had confirmed that all of the Soviet merchant
ships bound for Cuba either had come to a dead halt in the

water or had reversed course and were headed back to the
Soviet Union.— When McNamara was told that the navy
had sat on this critically important information for more
than twelve hours without telling anyone, an NS A history
reports, the secretary of defense “subjected Admiral
Anderson, the Chief of Naval Operations, to an abusive
tirade.” Why the navy did not pass on this vital
information remains a mystery. But the retreat of the
Soviet merchant ships did not end the crisis.—

On Friday, October 26, NS A confirmed that all Soviet
and Warsaw Pact ground and air forces in Eastern Europe
and throughout the Euro pean portion of the Soviet Union
had been placed on an increased state of alert. SIGINT
also confirmed that some Soviet army units had suddenly
left their barracks in East Germany and moved to
concentration points closer to the border with West
Germany; Soviet military exercises and training activity
in East Germany had been stepped up; and even more
Soviet tactical aircraft based in East Germany had been
placed on five-minute-alert status. COMINT confirmed
that an unknown number of ships and submarines from
the Soviets’ North and Baltic Sea Fleets had hastily
sortied from their home ports, and that Soviet naval units
had stepped up their surveillance of the entrance to the
Baltic Sea.—

As the level of tension and apprehension increased,
NS A director Blake became increasingly concerned about

the close proximity of the Oxfordto the Cuban shoreline,
which left the unarmed ship highly vulnerable to attack by
Cuban or Russian forces if war broke out. The Cubans
had vigorously complained to the U.N. Security Council
about the Oxford'^ continued presence off Havana.— At a
ten a.m. meeting with President Kennedy on October 26,
the question of what to do with the Ox/orJcame up, and
Secretary McNamara urged the president to pull the ship
back so as to prevent a possible incident. He later noted,
“The Navy was very much concerned about the
vulnerability of this ship and the loss of security if its
personnel were captured ... It seemed wise to draw it out
20, 30 miles to take it out of range of capture, at least
temporarily.”— The Ox^br^was ordered to pull back to a
distance of thirty miles from the Cuban coastline until
further notice.—

The Cuban Missile Crisis hit its peak on Saturday,
October 27, which many NS A staffers remember as the
scariest of the entire crisis, particularly for those at NS A
headquarters, where the agency’s intelligence analysts
knew how dire the situation really was. NS A official
Harold Parish, who was then working on the Cuban
problem, recalled, “The [Soviet] ships were getting close
to the [quarantine] lines ... It was a scary time for those
of us who had a little bit of access to information which
wasn’t generally available.”— The news coming out of
Fort Meade was ominous. NS A reported that its listening

posts had detected the Cuban military mobilizing at a
“high rate,” but that these forces remained “under orders
not to take any hostile action unless attacked.” In East
Germany, intercepted radio traffic showed that selected
Russian combat units were continuing to increase their
readiness levels, although no significant troop movements
had been noted in SIGINT or other intelligence sources.—
Throughout Washington, there was heightened concern
about the possibility of an armed incident taking place
involving an American reconnaissance aircraft. On
August 26 and 30, U-2 reconnaissance aircraft had
accidentally penetrated Soviet airspace, the latter incident
resulting in Russian MiGs scrambling to intercept the
errant American plans. Then on September 8, a U-2 had
been shot down by a Chinese SAM while over the
mainland. Its Chinese Nationalist pilot was killed.—

On the afternoon of October 27, everyone’s worst fears
came true. At twelve noon, intercepts of Cuban radio
traffic confirmed that a Soviet SA-2 SAM unit near Banes
had shot down a U.S. Air Force U-2 reconnaissance
aircraft. The U-2’s pilot. Major Rudolf Anderson Jr., had
been killed instantly. At six p.m., the Joint Chiefs of Staff
were told, “Intercept says the Cubans have recovered
body and wreckage of the U-2.”— In April 1964, an
analysis of traffic on that day suggested that the SAM site
that brought down Anderson’s aircraft might have been
manned by trigger-happy Cubans. But no definitive

conclusion was ever reached.—

However, SIGINT confirmed that within hours of
Anderson’s U-2 being shot down, the Soviets took over
the entire Cuban air defense system lock, stock, and
barrel. From that evening onward, only Russian-language
commands, codes, call signs, and operating procedures
were used on the air defense radio links.

Intercepts also showed that within forty-eight hours
Russian air defense troops physically took over all of the
SA-2 SAM sites in Cuba. The same thing happened to the
Cuban air force, whose voices overnight disappeared from
the airwaves and were replaced by those of Russian pilots
flying more advanced MiG-21 fighters.—

On Sunday, October 28, fresh U-2 reconnaissance
imagery showed that all twenty-four medium-range
ballistic missile launchers in Cuba were now fully
operational. And on the same day, NS A intercepted a
number of messages from the Cuban Ministry of Armed
Forces addressed to all Cuban air defense and antiaircraft
units, reminding them to continue to obey an edict from
October 23 “not to open fire unless attacked.” NS A also
intercepted a radio transmission made by the head of the
Las Villas province militia ordering that “close
surveillance be maintained over militiamen and severe
measures be taken with those who demonstrate lack of
loyalty towards the present regime.” On the other side of
the Atlantic, intercepted radio traffic showed that Soviet
forces in East Germany remained in a state of

“precautionary defensive readiness.” Intelligence from
NSA’s Soviet Submarine Division at Fort Meade showed
that the number of Soviet attack submarines at sea was
higher than normal, but none were detected leaving Soviet
home waters and heading for Cuba. ^^^-^^"^^ memorandum,
Meanwhile, the Cubans struck back. On the night of
October 28, saboteurs blew up four electrical substations
in western Venezuela that were owned by the American
oil company Creole Corporation, resulting in the
temporary loss of one sixth of Venezuela’s daily oil
production of three million barrels. The previous
afternoon, an NS A listening post had intercepted a radio
transmission from a clandestine transmitter located
somewhere near Havana ordering a number of unknown
addressees in South America to destroy “any kind of
Yankee property.” The same directive was also broadcast
on October 28 and 30. CIA analysts soberly concluded,
“Further attempts at sabotage elsewhere in Latin America
can be expected.” They were right. On October 29 in
Santiago, Chile, a bomb that was meant to blow up the
U.S. embassy exploded prematurely, killing the bomb
maker.—

Conclusions

The bomb blasts marked, at least from NSA’s perspective,
the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Despite the agency’s
many important contributions, it is now clear that the

crisis was in fact anything but an intelligence success
story. Because NS A was unable to read high-level Soviet
cipher systems, it was not able to give an advance
warning of Soviet intentions before the first Soviet
merchant ships carrying the missiles headed for Cuba.
According to a former NS A intelligence analyst, the
agency failed to detect the disappearance, in internal
Soviet communications traffic, of the Fifty-first Rocket
Division before it appeared in Cuba in October 1962.
Moreover, NS A failed to detect the disappearance of five
complete medium-range and intermediate-range missile
regiments from their peacetime home bases inside the
Soviet Union before they too were detected inside Cuba
in October. The agency intercepted only one low-level
Russian message that vaguely suggested that the Russians
were thinking of deploying missiles to Cuba.^^

But most important of all, SIGINT did not pick up any
indication whatsoever that the Russian ballistic missiles
were in Cuba before they were detected by the CIA’s U-2
spy planes. A recently declassified NS A history concludes
that the Cuban Missile Crisis “marked the most
significant failure of SIGINT to warn national leaders
since World War II.”—

CHAPTER 6

Errors of Fact and Judgment
SIGINT and the Gulf of Tonkin Incidents

Behold, how great a matter a little fire
kindleth.

^JAMES 3:5

The 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Crisis is an important episode in
the history of both NS A and the entire U.S. intelligence
community because it demonstrated all too clearly two
critical points that were to rear their ugly head again forty
years later in the 2003 Iraqi weapons of mass destruction
scandal. The first was that under intense political
pressure, intelligence collectors and analysts will more
often than not choose as a matter of political expediency
notto send information to the White House that they know
will piss off the president of the United States. The
second was that intelligence information, if put in the
wrong hands, can all too easily be misused or
misinterpreted if a system of analytic checks and balances
are not in place and rigidly enforced.-

OPLAN 34A

Between 1958 and 1962, the CIA had sent a number of
agents into North Vietnam. The first agents were assigned
just to collect intelligence. Then, starting in 1960, teams
of South Vietnamese agents trained by the CIA were
infiltrated into North Vietnam to conduct sabotage as well
as collect intelligence. With very few exceptions, these
agent insertion operations were complete failures. The
North Vietnamese security services captured the agents
almost as soon as they arrived. Between 1961 and 1968,
the CIA and the Defense Department lost 112 agents who
were parachuted into North Vietnam, as well as a number
of the C-54, C-123, and C-130 transport aircraft used to
drop them. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s
typically understated comment on the agent drop program
was “Nothing came of any of it.”-
After this dismal performance, in July 1962 the
management of all covert operations against North
Vietnam was transferred from the CIA to the Defense
Department. On January 1, 1963, control of the conduct
of covert action operations inside North Vietnam was
given to the U.S. Army’s super-secret clandestine
intelligence unit in Vietnam, the Military Assistance
Command Vietnam Studies and Observation Group
(MACVSOG). Pursuant to a Top Secret operations plan
designated OPLAN 34-63, put together by the staff of the
Commander in Chief, Pacific (CINCPAC), in Hawaii,

U.S. -backed raids against the North Vietnamese coastline
by South Vietnamese commandos commenced in the fall
of 1963. But the results produced by these raids were
disappointing, and in December 1963 MACVSOG went
back to the drawing board and devised a new plan,
OPLAN 34A, which included an even greater level of
South Vietnamese participation and U.S. Navy support. In
January 1964, the U.S. Navy set up a secret base in Da
Nang to train South Vietnamese military personnel to
conduct maritime commando raids against the North
Vietnamese coastline with two PT boats provided by
MACVSOG2

Incredibly, virtually no one in NSA’s Office of Asian
Nations (B2), which was responsible for monitoring
developments in North Vietnam, was cleared for access to
details of OPLAN 3 4 A, including its head, Milton
Zaslow. Years later, Zaslow would tell a group of NS A
historians, “None of us had been cleared for 34A, and we
did not know that there were actions underway.

But a few officials within NS A knew about OPLAN
34A and were tasked with secretly providing SIGINT
support for the MACVSOG commando raids under the
name Project Kit Kat. Inside South Vietnam, some 130
army, navy, and air force SIGINT operators were engaged
full-time in monitoring North Vietnamese
communications as part of Kit Kat, including a highly
secretive unit at Tan Son Nhut Air Base, outside Saigon,
called the Special Support Group, whose job was to feed

SIGINT reporting concerning North Vietnamese reactions
to the OPLAN 34A raids to MACVSOG headquarters in
Saigon.-

In Washington a fierce debate was raging within the
U.S. intelligence community about whether to release to
the public information, including SIGINT,
“demonstrating to the world the extent of control
exercised by Hanoi over the Viet Cong in SVN [South
Vietnam] and Pathet Lao forces in Laos.” The available
intelligence showed that Hanoi was supplying and
equipping the guerrillas both by sea and by the Ho Chi
Minh Trail. But the U.S. intelligence community refused
to even consider releasing any SIGINT, warning, “Should
it become public knowledge that we are successfully
exploiting North Vietnamese communications, not only
the Vietnamese but the [Chinese] can be expected to take
additional security measures.

Back in Southeast Asia, the second round of
MACVSOG commando raids on the North Vietnamese
coast was proving to be no more successful than the first
round. During the spring of 1964, North Vietnamese
security forces inflicted severe losses on the OPLAN 34 A
maritime commando forces and bagged the few remaining
agents left in North Vietnam. Testifying in a closed
session before the House Armed Services Committee,
CIA director John McCone admitted that there had been
“many disappointments with these operations with a
number of teams rolled up” and that sabotage efforts had

“not been too significant.

In fact, as a declassified NS A history reveals, these
commando raids had only served to piss the North
Vietnamese off and “raised Hanoi’s determination to meet
them head on.” The volume of North Vietnamese naval
radio traffic went through the roof every time there was a
commando raid, with the intercepts indicating a
determination by the North Vietnamese to annihilate the
attackers. But the pressure from Washington for quick
results meant that the intelligence warnings of North
Vietnamese resolve were ignored, and new, larger, and
more aggressive commando raids were immediately
planned for the summer. Looking back at these events, it
is clear that both sides were charging rapidly toward an
inevitable clash that would lead to war.-

In Harm ’s Way

On July 3, 1964, the new commander of U.S. forces in
South Vietnam, General William Westmoreland, cabled
Washington with his intelligence requirements in support
of OPLAN 34 A. Westmoreland urgently requested more
intelligence collection regarding North Vietnamese
coastal defense and naval forces, which had been
plaguing the American-led 34A Special Operations
Forces. Westmoreland also required details concerning
North Vietnamese coastal radars that could detect and
track the 34 A patrol and speed boats operating along the

North Vietnamese coast. In particular, intelligence
coverage was requested for those areas in North Vietnam
scheduled as targets for OPLAN 34 A commando raids in
July, specifically the area around the city of Vinh and the
islands of Hon Me, Hon Nieu, and Hon Matt, further up
the coast.-

The principal means available in the Far East at the time
to gather this kind of intelligence was to use U.S. Navy
destroyers carrying a SIGINT detachment and special
radio intercept gear to slowly cruise off the enemy’s
coastline ferreting out secrets. These secret destroyer
reconnaissance patrols were known by the code name
Desoto.— The first of these Desoto destroyer
reconnaissance patrols was conducted off the coast of
China in April 1962. By July 1964, the Navy had
conducted sixteen Desoto patrols without serious incident,
all but two of which were focused on the Soviet and
Chinese coastlines.—

Responding to Westmoreland’s request, on July 10,
Admiral Ulysses S.G. Sharp Jr., the newly appointed
commander of CINCPAC in Hawaii, approved a
destroyer reconnaissance patrol of the North Vietnamese
coast and forwarded the request to the 303 Committee, the
secret committee in Washington that then supervised all
sensitive covert and clandestine intelligence activities
conducted by the U.S. intelligence community. After a
perfunctory review, the 303 Committee approved the

patrol on July 15 and a host of other sensitive
reconnaissance operations proposed for initiation in
August, with the Desoto patrol getting under way no later
than July 31, to determine the nature and extent of North
Vietnam’s naval patrol activity along its coastline.—

On July 18, CINCPAC selected the destroyer USS
Maddox(\yD-l?>\), then in port at Keelung, to conduct the
August Desoto patrol off North Vietnam. The twenty-
two-hundred-ton MaddoxsNdi^ a World War Il-vintage
Alan M. Sumner- class destroyer built in Bath, Maine,
and commissioned on June 2, 1944. She served with
distinction during World War II in the Pacific, taking a hit
from a Japanese kamikaze on January 21, 1945, which
kept her out of action for two months. She served in
support of U.N. forces during the Korean War and
continued operating in various parts of the Pacific until
1974. She carried a crew of 336 officers and enlisted men,
and her main armament were six twin-mounted five-inch
guns and four twin-mounted three-inch antiaircraft guns
mounted on raised platforms behind the rear smokestack,
which had been added in the mid-1950s in place of her
original complement of forty-millimeter and twenty-
millimeter AA guns. The MaJJoxwas chosen for the
mission because her old torpedo tubes, which had taken
up the entire 0-1 deck between the two smokestacks, had
been removed in the 1950s and replaced by two
antisubmarine “hedgehogs” located on either side of the
bridge. This meant that the entire torpedo deck was free

for modules that housed electronic surveillance equipment
and the military and NS A personnel who operated them,
in what was known as a SIGINT COM VAN.—

The primary mission of the MaJJoxwas to collect
intelligence on North Vietnamese naval forces, monitor
North Vietnamese coastal radar stations, and try to
ascertain whether junks based in North Vietnam were
helping infiltrate supplies and equipment into South
Vietnam. Only four officers on board were cleared for
access to SIGINT: the task force commander. Captain
John Herrick; the ship’s captain. Captain Herbert Ogier
Jr.; Herrick’s flag lieutenant; and Ogier’ s executive
officer. All four officers were briefed in general terms
about the OPLAN 34 A commando operations then taking
place against North Vietnam, but they were deliberately
not told about the forthcoming 34A raids that would
coincide with their mission. As with the John R. Craig' ^
patrol in the Gulf of Tonkin four months earlier,
CINCPAC ordered that the destroyer come no closer than
eight miles from the North Vietnamese coastline, but the
MaddoxsNdi^ permitted to come within four miles of
islands off the coast, which as it turned out were key
targets of the forthcoming raids.—

Captain Norman Klar, the commander of the U.S. Navy
SIGINT unit in Taiwan — ^Naval Security Group Activity,
Taipei — gave Captains Herrick and Ogier, as well as their
staff officers, a pre-mission intelligence briefing on the
North Vietnamese order of battle. At the end of the

briefing, Ogier asked Klar only one question: “Will my
ship be attacked?” This, according to Klar’s memoirs,
written years later, was his response: “I said ‘No.’ You
are not the first DESOTO patrol in the Gulf There has
been absolutely no hostile action taken by the Vietnamese
in the past, and I believe that will continue.” Klar went on
to admit that his assessment turned out to be horribly
incorrect, saying, “Talk about being wrong!”—

The “business end” of the Maddox'^ secret intelligence
mission arrived on July 24, when a massive shipyard
crane lifted a ten-ton SIGINT COMVAN off the deck of
the destroyer USS George K. MacKenzie, which had just
returned to Keelung from an intelligence collection
mission off the Soviet coastline, and placed it on the
torpedo deck of the MaddoxhQtwQQn the ship’s two
smokestacks. The Maddox'^ crew, who had watched with
undisguised interest as the heavily guarded van was
lowered onto their ship, were ordered not to enter the
restricted area around the COMVAN or to ask any
questions about what it was there for. Inside the air-
conditioned gray van were three radio intercept positions
and a communications position linking the van with NS A
and local listening posts. Several intercept antennae were
mounted on the roof of the van, while other antennae
were hastily strung between the van and the Maddox'^
smokestacks. Accompanying the COMVAN was a
fifteen-man detachment of navy and marine intercept
operators under the command of a twenty-eight-year-old

Texan named Lieutenant Gerrell “Gary” Moore, a
Chinese linguist whose regular billet was assistant
operations officer at the U.S. Navy listening post in
Taiwan at Shu Lin Kou Air Station, west of Taipei. Their
job was to warn the Maddoxoi any danger to the ship and
to collect SIGINT concerning North Vietnamese naval
activity of interest to theater of operations and national
intelligence consumers.—

At eight in the morning on July 28, the MaJJoxdeparted
from Keelung. For three days it steamed southward along
the southern Chinese coast and around the Chinese island
of Hainan in the Gulf of Tonkin. The embarked Naval
Security Group personnel used the time to check their
equipment and monitor Chinese radio traffic and radar
emissions from the east coast of Hainan as the
MaddoxhQdidQd for “Yankee Station,” off the coast of
North Vietnam.—

Unbeknownst to the men on the Maddox, shortly before
midnight on the evening of July 30, four South
Vietnamese “Nasty”-class patrol boats working for
MACVSOG attacked North Vietnamese coastal defense
positions on Hon Me and Hon Nieu Islands.— Although
the damage inflicted by the patrol boats was slight, the
North Vietnamese reacted violently to the attack, with
SIGINT showing that the four patrol craft were pursued
for a time by as many as four North Vietnamese Swatow-
class patrol vessels. The captain of the North Vietnamese

Swatow vessel T-142 later radioed that the boats had been
unable to catch the South Vietnamese craft, had ceased
the pursuit, and were returning to base. This encrypted
message, sent in Morse code, was intercepted by the U.S.
Navy listening post at San Miguel in the Philippines,
decrypted, translated, and sent via teletype to NS A
headquarters at Fort Meade.—

At seven twenty a.m. on Friday, July 31, only a few
hours after the OPLAN 34A attack on Hon Me and Hon
Nieu Islands had taken place, the MaJJoxrefueled from
the tanker USS AshtabulaQdiSt of the demilitarized zone
(DMZ), then steamed northward along the North
Vietnamese coast on its assigned patrol track. During the
refueling, lookouts on the MaddoxspottQd the South
Vietnamese patrol craft that had attacked Hon Me and
Hon Nieu moving south at maximum speed toward their
base at Da Nang.—

For the next two days, the MaddoxssiilQd northward at a
leisurely pace, spending most of July 31 off Hon Gio
Island near the DMZ, then the morning of August 1 off
the port of Vinh Son, before reaching its third orbit point
(“Point Charlie”) off Hon Me Island just as the sun was
setting, at seven p.m. As noted above, Hon Me had been
attacked by South Vietnamese Nasty patrol boats two
nights earlier. Up to this point, the two-day cruise along
the North Vietnamese coast had been uneventful. But
unbeknownst to the Maddox, North Vietnamese radar

stations were closely following the ship’s movements.—

Shortly before midnight (eleven twenty-seven p.m.) on
August 1, U.S. Navy radio intercept operators at San
Miguel and Phu Bai, in South Vietnam, intercepted a
North Vietnamese radio message. It took almost three
hours to decrypt, then translate the message. When fully
translated, it turned out to be a high-priority message from
the North Vietnamese Southern Fleet headquarters at Ben
Thuy to an entity designated only as “255,” stating that it
had “decided to fight the enemy tonight.” The San Miguel
analysts were pretty sure the “enemy” referred to was the
Maddox?^ A few minutes later, a second message was
intercepted by the San Miguel listening post that
confirmed it. Shortly after that, at one fifty-five a.m. on
August 2, San Miguel intercepted a third message
revealing that three Russian-made P-4 PT boats had been
dispatched from nearby Thanh Hoa naval base to
reinforce the three Swatow-class patrol boats already
operating in the Hon Me-Hon Nieu area, where the
MaddoxsNdi^ cruising.—

At two twenty- four a.m., San Miguel forwarded a
summary of the translated “fight the enemy tonight”
intercept to the COMVAN on the Maddox. A few minutes
later. Lieutenant Moore, the commander of the
COMVAN, woke Captains Herrick and Ogier in their
staterooms and informed them of the new intelligence.
The report unsettled Herrick, who concluded that the

MaddoxwdiS about to be attacked. At two fifty- four a.m.,
Herrick sent a FLASH-precedence message to the
commander of the U.S. Seventh Fleet in Japan stating,
“Contemplate serious reaction my movements [vicinity]
Pt. Charlie in near future. Received info indicating
possible hostile action.” Without waiting for a reply from
the Seventh Fleet, Herrick ordered general quarters
sounded on the Maddoxdind shifted course to the east.
While the crew took up battle stations, the destroyer sped
away from the North Vietnamese coast and the threatened
attack at flank speed.—

Despite the urgent request from the on-scene
commander to cancel the remainder of the patrol because
of “unacceptable risk,” Herrick was directed to resume the
patrol by the commander of the Seventh Fleet. The
MaddoxYQdLchQd “Point Delta,” off the port and naval base
of Thanh Hoa, at nine forty- five a.m. and prepared for an
eight-hour orbit just off Hon Me Island. But the cautious
Herrick refused to allow the MaddoxXo come as close to
the North Vietnamese coastline as he had the previous
day, keeping his ship out of harm’s way as best he
could.—

At two past ten a.m. as the MaJJoxsailed toward Hon
Me Island, an urgent message titled “Possible Planned
Attack by DRV Navy on Desoto Patrol” was sent from
NS A to CINCPAC and the Seventh Fleet — ^but strangely
enough, the COMVAN on the MaddoxwdiS not on the
distribution list. The NS A message noted that an

intercepted July 31 North Vietnamese message detailing
the damage caused by the OPLAN 34A attack on Hon Me
also “indicated DRV [North Vietnamese] intentions and
preparations to repulse further such attacks.” As a result,
NSA concluded that the North Vietnamese “reaction to
Desoto patrol might be more severe than would otherwise
be anticipated” because the North Vietnamese had
connected the July 3 1 commando raid with the presence
of the Maddox. The problem was that the Maddox6id not
know this.—

At eleven thirty a.m., an hour and a half after the NSA
warning message was issued, three North Vietnamese P-4
PT boats (T-333, T-336, and T-339 from Division 3 of PT
Squadron 135) were spotted by the Maddox'^ lookouts
arriving at Hon Me Island. A few minutes later, the
Maddoxs^oXiQd two Swatow patrol boats (T-142 and T-
146) entering Hon Me cove. In response to the arrival of
these vessels, at eleven thirty-eight the Maddox^hiiiQd
course to the northeast and moved toward its next patrol
orbit point, designated “Point Echo,” in order to put some
distance between it and the five North Vietnamese boats.
By two p.m., the MaddoxwdiS fifteen miles from the North
Vietnamese coastline on course for Point Echo, moving
northward at a leisurely ten knots.—

At two sixteen p.m.. Lieutenant Moore raced to the
bridge of the MaJJoxcarrying yet another single slip of
paper. It was a CRITIC message just issued by the
listening post at San Miguel, and it reported that two and

a half hours earlier the North Vietnamese navy
headquarters had ordered the five warships at Hon Me
Island to attack “the enemy and use torpedoes.”— Despite
the fact that this was the second attack order that had been
intercepted that day, Captains Herrick and Ogier
concluded that an attack on the MaddoxwdiS indeed
imminent, and at two twenty-three Ogier ordered the
Maddoxto shift course to the east and make best speed for
the safety of the open waters at the mouth of the Gulf of
Tonkin.—

The veracity of the information contained in the
intercept was confirmed seven minutes later when the
Maddox'^ radar operators detected three North
Vietnamese torpedo boats thirty miles to the southwest
headed directly toward the MaddoxdX thirty knots. At the
time, the MaddoxxNdi^ twenty-two miles off the coast of
North Vietnam and moving at eleven knots to the east
away from the coastline. When the torpedo boats came
within twenty miles of the Maddox, at two thirty, p.m.,
Ogier ordered general quarters sounded and increased the
ship’s speed to twenty- five knots, moving the destroyer’s
course further to the southeast so as to present a smaller
target to the torpedo boats directly behind him. At two
forty p.m., Herrick sent a FLASH precedence message to
the commander of the Seventh Fleet reporting, “I am
being approached by high-speed craft with apparent
intention of torpedo attack. Intend to open fire if

necessary in self-defense.”—

By three p.m., the North Vietnamese PT boats were
only five miles from the Maddoxdind continuing to close
at their maximum attack speed of fifty knots. At five past
three, as the PT boats moved into attack formation at a
distance of 9,800 yards from the destroyer to begin their
torpedo runs, the MaddoxfiYQd three warning shots from
her five-inch guns across the bow of the lead PT boat.
When the boats continued on their attack run, at seven
past three the MaddoxmdioQd that it was under attack and
opened fire on the attackers with all its main batteries.—

Two of the PT boats launched their torpedoes from a
distance of 2,700 yards, forcing the MaddoxXo take
evasive action while continuing to fire on the attackers
with its main batteries. Just as the third PT boat launched
its torpedoes, it took a direct hit from one of the Maddox'^
five-inch guns and was reduced to a fiery furnace. At
about the same time, four U.S. Navy F-8E Crusader
fighters from the aircraft carrier USS TiconderogamixQd
on the scene and attacked the PT boats, which were
damaged and retiring from the battle. Under the cover of
the air attack, the Maddoxtook the opportunity to
withdraw from the scene and make for the mouth of the
Gulf of Tonkin.

When the thirty-seven-minute battle was over, the
Maddoxhdid fired more than 250 five-inch and three-inch
shells. One of the North Vietnamese PT boats was dead in
the water and burning fiercely. The other two torpedo

boats had withdrawn back to Hon Me after having
suffered extensive damage. For its part, the Maddoxhsid
been hit by only a single machine gun bullet.

News of the North Vietnamese attack on the
MaddoxbQgmi rolling across the teletypes in the
communications centers at the White House, the CIA, and
the State and Defense Departments shortly after five a.m.
Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) on Monday, August 2.
President Lyndon Johnson was informed of the attack
before he sat down to breakfast at nine. At a meeting with
his national security advisers in the Oval Office at eleven
thirty A.M., senior NS A officials briefed Johnson,
Secretary of Defense McNamara, Secretary of State Dean
Rusk, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS),
General Earle Wheeler, on the available SIGINT
concerning the attack. CIA director McCone was notably
but mystifyingly not invited to attend the meeting. A
review of the evidence convinced those present that the
attack had probably been ordered by overzealous North
Vietnamese naval commanders, leading Johnson not to
opt for retaliation despite pressure from the South
Vietnamese government and the American ambassador in
Saigon to do so. Instead, Johnson decided on a more
restrained response. Seeking to show strength and resolve,
he ordered the Maddoxio resume its patrol, this time
reinforced by the destroyer USS C. Turner Joy, but both
ships were instructed to stay at least eleven miles from the
North Vietnamese coastline at all times. Continuous air

cover for the patrol was to be supplied by the carrier
Ticonderoga, stationed nearby in the Gulf of Tonkin, and
the aircraft carrier USS Constellations ordered from
Hong Kong to reinforce the Ticonderoga. Johnson then
called news reporters into the Oval Office and announced
that the United States intended to continue the Desoto
patrol, and that any repetition of the August 2 attack
would have “dire consequences.” —

Johnson’s national security officials had already come
to the conclusion that the North Vietnamese had attacked
the MaJJoxbecause, as SIGINT showed, Hanoi had
connected the presence of the destroyer off the coast with
the OPLAN 34A commando raids. With more raids
scheduled for that night and the next three days, and
despite suggestions from a few officials at the State
Department that the raids be temporarily suspended to
defuse the situation, Johnson and his key national security
advisers concluded that the raids should continue because
they were “beginning to rattle Hanoi and [the]
MaddoxincidQnt [was] directly related to their effort to
resist these activities.” Determined to show resolve,
Johnson and his advisers ordered the Desoto patrol to
continue and the tempo of the OPLAN 34 A attacks to be
intensified.—

At twelve fifteen p.m. EDT (eleven fifteen p.m. Gulf of
Tonkin, or GOT, time), NS A headquarters issued orders
to the headquarters of NS A Pacific in Hawaii and to all
army, navy, and air force listening posts in the western

Pacific, declaring a SIGINT Readiness Condition
BRAVO, which was a heightened state of alert
comparable to the DEFCON alert system utilized by the
JCS. Under this elevated SIGINT Readiness Condition,
which was designated Lantern, all NS A intercept stations
in the Pacific were ordered to intensify their collection
efforts against North Vietnamese communications in
support of the ongoing Desoto patrol and were directed to
report immediately by CRITIC-priority message any
reflections appearing in COMINT of North Vietnamese or
Chinese military reactions to the Desoto patrol.—

The events of August 2, 1964, showed NSA at its most
impressive. The official NSA history of the affair reports,
“The SIGINT community could be proud of its efforts
during the day. The field sites and NSA had intercepted,
processed, and reported North Vietnamese naval
communications in such a rapid and clear way that
everyone in the Pacific command was aware of the
approaching attack.”— But it was at the tactical level that
NSA’s efforts mattered most. Dr. Edwin Moi'se, a
historian at Clemson University who has studied the Gulf
of Tonkin incident for almost ten years, concluded that
the interception of the North Vietnamese attack order
gave the Maddoxdi crucial advantage over the North
Vietnamese, since it allowed the destroyer’s captain to
change course in time, forcing the Vietnamese PT boats to
attack the destroyer from the rear. This minimized the
target that the unfortunate North Vietnamese commander

could hit and at the same time presented the PT boats with
the full force of the destroyer’s weaponry.—

Interregnum: August 3, 1964

At six thirty a.m. local time on Monday, August 3, the
Maddox, accompanied by the newly arrived destroyer C.
Turner Joy, resumed its patrol in the Gulf of Tonkin,
heading once again for Point Charlie off the island of Hon
Me. Captain Herrick’s recommendation that the patrol be
canceled because of the likelihood of a North Vietnamese
attack was rejected by higher authorities, and he was
ordered to resume the patrol. The cruise northward was
uneventful except for the interception of Skinhead radar
emissions at two twenty p.m. Ensign Frederick Frick, who
was the watch officer in the Maddox'^ combat
information center, recalled, “We knew there was a bad
guy [Swatow patrol boat] out there. And we knew there
were three or four more of them.”—

Two hours later, a North Vietnamese Swatow patrol
boat (T-142) began shadowing the two American
destroyers, periodically reporting the positions of the
Maddoxdind the Turner Joyio headquarters by radio,
messages that were intercepted by NS A listening posts in
South Vietnam and the Philippines. After completing his
assigned patrol orbit off Hon Me, at four twenty- seven
p.m. Herrick ordered the Maddoxto retire to the mouth of
the Gulf of Tonkin for the night before resuming its patrol

along the coastline in the morning.— That night, from ten
fifty-two to two past eleven p.m., South Vietnamese PT
boats belonging to MACVSOG bombarded North
Vietnamese coastal installations, specifically a radar site
at Vinh Son and a coastal defense installation at Mui Ron.
These OPLAN 34A attacks were sure to elicit a military
response from the North Vietnamese. On their return to
Da Nang, the South Vietnamese boats were pursued for
an hour by a North Vietnamese patrol boat.—

Early the next morning, COMINT began picking up the
first North Vietnamese military reactions to the Vinh
Son-Mui Ron raids that had taken place a few hours
earlier. Radio intercepts collected by Marine Corps
intercept operators at Phu Bai revealed that the North
Vietnamese navy headquarters in Haiphong had
connected the presence of the two American destroyers in
the Gulf of Tonkin with the OPLAN 34 A raids on Vinh
Son and Mui Ron and that a response was anticipated.—

The Phantom Battle of August 4, 1964

After a long and sleepless night, at six a.m. on August 4
the Maddoxdind the Turner Jqyresumed their patrol,
making for the North Vietnamese coastline two hundred
miles above the DMZ.

On the Maddox, Captain Herrick was decidedly
unhappy about the position he had been placed in by his
superiors, and he decided to take action to protect his

command based on what had happened to the Maddoxtwo
days previously. Although unaware of the OPLAN 34A
attacks that had taken place just a few hours earlier,
Herrick was nevertheless concerned that the day’s patrol
track called for him to once again orbit off Hon Me
Island, where he knew a force of North Vietnamese PT
boats was based that could easily attack the destroyers
with little or no warning. At eight forty a.m., Herrick sent
the following message to Seventh Fleet headquarters in
Japan:

Evaluation of info from various sources indicates
that the DRV considers patrol directly involved with
34A operations and have already indicated readiness
to treat us in that category.

DRV are very sensitive about Hon Me. Believe this
PT operating base and the cove there presently
contains numerous patrol and PT craft which have
been repositioned from northerly bases.

Under these conditions 15 min. reaction time for
operating air cover is unacceptable. Cover must be
overhead and controlled by DD’s at all times.—

Admiral Thomas Moorer, the commander of the Pacific
Fleet in Hawaii, read Herrick’s message and fired off an
angry cable of his own to CINCPAC, recommending the
continuation of the Desoto patrol and arguing,
“Termination of Desoto patrol after two days of patrol ops

subsequent to Maddox incident . . . does not in my view
adequately demonstrate United States resolve to assert our
legitimate rights in these international waters.” What had
started out as a simple intelligence collection mission had
now become a matter of asserting freedom of navigation
on the high seas, as well as not showing any sign of
weakness in the face of North Vietnamese belligerence.—

Herrick’s sense of apprehension was heightened when
at nine thirty a.m. the radar operators on the Maddoxdind
the Turner Jqypicked up a radar contact of a “bogey”
(unidentified surface craft) paralleling the course of the
two American destroyers, but then the target disappeared
as quickly as it had appeared. Herrick concluded that his
task force of destroyers was being shadowed by at least
one Swatow patrol boat.

The destroyers reached Point Delta, off Thanh Hoa, at
eleven forty-five. They then shifted course to the south
and followed a course parallel to the North Vietnamese
coastline down to a point opposite Hon Me, coming no
closer than sixteen miles from the coast. On the cruise
southward, the radar operators on the two ships picked up
a few contacts, but otherwise the patrol was uneventful.
After a tension-filled day with little intelligence to show
for the effort, a relieved Herrick called off the patrol at
four p.m. and ordered a change of course to the east and
the middle of the Gulf of Tonkin, well away from the
coastline, with the intention of resuming the patrol the
following morning.—

At six fifteen, a little more than two hours after Herrick
had called it a day, the NS A listening post at Phu Bai sent
to the COMVAN on the Maddoxa. CRITIC message
stating, ‘Toss DRV naval operations planned against the
Desoto patrol tonite 04 Aug[ust]. Amplifying data [
follows].” Twenty-five minutes later, Phu Bai sent a
follow-up report, which stated, “Imminent plans of DRV
naval action possibly against Desoto mission,” adding that
intercept messages revealed that two hours earlier three
North Vietnamese Swatow patrol boats had been ordered
to “make ready for military operations the night of 4
August.”—

Once again. Lieutenant Moore raced from the
COMVAN to the bridge of the Maddoxto hand-deliver the
report to Captains Herrick and Ogier. Both men
concluded that the intercept was an authentic order to
attack the destroyers. At seven thirty p.m., Herrick
ordered the two destroyers to increase speed from twelve
to twenty knots in the hope of reaching the mouth of the
Gulf of Tonkin before the pursuing North Vietnamese
could catch up to them. Ten minutes later, Herrick radioed
the captain of the aircraft carrier Ticonderoga, steaming
nearby, that he had received “info indicating attack by
PGM/P-4 imminent. My position 19-107N 1 07-003 E [60
miles southeast of Hon Me]. Proceeding southeast at best
speed.” He described the source of this information as
simply “an intelligence source.”—

Less than a minute after Herrick’s message to the

TiconderogawQnt out, the radar operators on the
MaddoxpickQd up an intermittent surface contact (or
“skunk”) forty-two miles to the northeast, which was
where both destroyers had anchored the previous evening.
Fearing a trap, at seven forty-six p.m. Herrick ordered the
Maddoxmd the Turner Joyio shift course away from the
reported radar contacts. But Herrick was unable to shake
his pursuers.—

Four minutes after the Maddoxand the Turner
/oychanged course, at eight fifty a.m. EDT in
Washington, Secretary McNamara and the chairman of
the JCS, General Wheeler, were briefed on the contents of
the Phu Bai CRITIC message. At nine twelve a.m.,
McNamara informed President Johnson of the indications
coming from Fort Meade that the North Vietnamese
intended to attack the Maddoxdind the Turner Joy.
Wheeler telephoned Admiral Sharp at CINCPAC
headquarters and told him to ensure that the captain of the
Ticonderoga, which was stationed off the coast fifteen
minutes by air from the two destroyers, was apprised of
the situation and to authorize the carrier commander to
take “positive aggressive measures to seek and destroy
attacking forces if the attack should occur.”— McNamara
did not waste any time beginning to plan a retaliatory
strike. At nine twenty-five a.m. EDT, only thirteen
minutes after he had spoken to Johnson, McNamara
called a meeting in his office attended by his deputy,
Cyrus Vance, and representatives of the JCS to discuss

possible retaliatory measures if the North Vietnamese
should attack the Maddoxdind the Turner Joy.—

In the Gulf of Tonkin, events moved with astonishing
speed. At eight thirty-six p.m. (nine thirty-six a.m. EDT),
Captain Herrick radioed that the radar operators on the
Maddoxdind the Turner Jpywere tracking two unidentified
surface contacts and three unidentified aircraft. The
unidentified aircraft disappeared from the radar screens,
but the radar operators on the two destroyers reported that
the surface contacts were coming ever closer at speeds of
between thirty- five and forty knots. At nine thirty-nine
p.m., the Turner Joyopened fire on a radar contact
believed to have been a North Vietnamese PT boat that
had closed to within seven thousand yards. She was
joined almost immediately by the five-inch guns on the
Maddox. During the three-and-a-half-hour “battle” that
ensued, the Maddoxsiud the Turner Joyfired more than
370 rounds from their three-inch and five-inch guns and
dropped four or five depth charges, beating off an attack
of what were believed to be six or more North
Vietnamese PT boats and reportedly sinking two of the
attackers — and amazingly without sustaining a single hit
from enemy torpedoes or gunfire.—

The Day of Reckoning: August 5, 1964

The first FLASH-precedence messages about the naval
engagement in the Gulf of Tonkin started coming across

the teletypes at the National Military Command Center in
the Pentagon at eleven a.m. EDT on August 4, less than
twenty minutes into the engagement. The messages
reported that the American destroyers were under attack
and had evaded numerous enemy torpedoes.

At six past eleven a.m. (six past ten a.m. GOT time),
Secretary McNamara called President Johnson to tell him
that a sea battle was then under way in the Gulf of
Tonkin. Four minutes later, McNamara convened a
meeting in his third-floor conference room in the E Ring
of the Pentagon with the members of the JCS, Secretary
of State Rusk, and National Security Advisor McGeorge
Bundy to discuss military retaliation against North
Vietnam. At eleven thirty-five a.m., McNamara, Rusk,
and Bundy left the Pentagon to attend a regularly
scheduled NSC meeting at the White House, where they
intended to recommend an immediate retaliatory air strike
against North Vietnam, which had the blessing of the
JCS. At twelve forty p.m., McNamara briefed Johnson
and the NSC on the latest information available
concerning what was occurring halfway around the world
in the Gulf of Tonkin.

Within an hour of the meeting’s breaking up. Admiral
Sharp telephoned McNamara from Hawaii to personally
recommend air strikes against the bases of the North
Vietnamese torpedo boats. With this recommendation in
hand, the JCS staff began selecting targets for the
retaliatory air strike from a ninety- four-target list that had

been secretly compiled earlier in 1964. At a one p.m.
luncheon at the White House, Johnson, McNamara, Rusk,
Bundy, and CIA director McCone unanimously agreed
that retaliatory air strikes were required. —

At twelve twenty-seven a.m. on August 5 in the Gulf of
Tonkin, Captain Herrick sent the following cautious
message to Sharp: “Review of action makes many
recorded contacts and torpedoes fired appear doubtful.
Freak weather effects on radar and overeager sonarmen
may have accounted for many reports. No actual visual
sightings by Maddox. Suggest complete evaluation before
any further actions.” At twelve fifty- four, he sent a second
message: “Joy also reports no actual visual sightings or
wake of enemy . . . Entire action leaves many doubts
except for apparent attempt at ambush at beginning.”—

At one thirty-five p.m. EDT, August 4 (twelve thirty-
five a.m. GOT time, August 5), the JCS informed
McNamara that a list of targets had been compiled for air
strikes, which could be executed if approved by the
president. At a second NSC meeting that afternoon,
Johnson ordered that the retaliatory air strikes be executed
and said that he would seek to obtain as quickly as
possible the support of the U.S. Senate for the strikes. As
an NS A historical report notes, “Certainly none of the
information coming out . . . either before or in the hours
following the execution order was sufficiently persuasive
to support such a momentous decision.” At three p.m..
Secretary McNamara returned to the Pentagon to approve

the target list for the air strikes, leaving the preparation of
the execute order to the JCS. He told the JCS that Johnson
wanted the air strikes to begin promptly at seven that
evening (six a.m. GOT time, August 5) so as to coincide
with a planned prime-time televised address by Johnson
to the nation.—

As the plans for the retaliatory air strike moved rapidly
forward. Captains Herrick and Ogier on the Maddox^QVQ
frantically trying to ascertain what exactly had occurred
while battling exhaustion and fending off urgent demands
for information from their superiors. When the two were
told that during the engagement they had evaded a total of
twenty- six torpedoes, they immediately knew that
something was terribly wrong, since there were only
twelve PT boats in the entire North Vietnamese navy,
each carrying only two torpedo tubes that could not be
reloaded at sea. What this meant was that even if every
single North Vietnamese PT boat had been in the Tonkin
Gulf that night (an impossibility to begin with), they
could have fired only twenty-four torpedoes. Their
suspicions were reinforced when they learned that all of
the torpedoes had been heard by the Maddox'^
inexperienced sonar operator, while the more experienced
sonar operator on the nearby Turner Joydid not hear one
torpedo in the water during the entire four-hour battle.
Someone on the MaddoxTmsXXy figured out that every
torpedo warning issued by the ship’s sonarman had
followed a sharp change in course by the Maddox. A test

proved that the sonar operator on the Maddoxha^d
mistaken the change in cavitation noises made by the
destroyer when it changed course for the noise made by a
torpedo. —

At one forty-eight a.m. GOT time, August 5, Herrick
sent another message to Admiral Sharp at CINCPAC,
which stated,

Certain that original ambush was bonafide. Details of
action following present a confusing picture. Have
interviewed witnesses who made positive visual
sightings of cockpit lights or similar passing near
Maddox. Several reported torpedoes were probably
boats themselves which were observed to make
several close passes on Maddox. Own ship screw
noises on rudders may have accounted for some. At
present cannot even estimate number of boats
involved. Turner Joy reports 2 torpedoes passed near
her.—

Despite Herrick’s more upbeat and confident report.
Sharp became worried about the strength of the evidence,
or lack thereof, regarding the purported engagement. The
three after-action reports that Sharp had received from
Herrick were far from definitive and clearly indicated
doubts about what had actually happened. When
McNamara called Sharp at eight past four p.m. EDT
(eight past three a.m. GOT time, August 5), Sharp was

forced to tell him that the latest messages from Herrick
indicated “a little doubt on just what exactly went on.”
With the air strike preparations now nearing completion,
this clearly was not what McNamara wanted to hear. He
told Sharp that the air strike execution order would remain
in force (the aircraft were expected to launch from their
carriers in three hours), but ordered him to confirm that an
attack had indeed taken place before the navy fighter-
bombers were launched.—

At four forty-seven p.m. EDT, McNamara met with the
JCS “to marshal the evidence to overcome lack of a clear
and convincing evidence showing that an attack on the
destroyer had in fact occurred.” Based on the information
then available to CINCPAC, Sharp concluded that an
attack had taken place, an opinion that carried great
weight with McNamara and the JCS. From Herrick’s
reports, which were a mixed bag at best, McNamara and
the JCS were able to extract some evidence to support
their belief that the attack had occurred, including
sightings of ship wakes by navy pilots; sonar reports of
torpedoes being fired at the American destroyers; a report
from the captain of the Turner Joythat his ship had been
illuminated by what was believed to be a searchlight
while taking automatic weapons fire; and the fact that one
of the destroyers had observed cockpit lights on an
unidentified ship. Finally, and most important, there were
a number of SIGINT intercepts that appeared to buttress
the case for an attack having occurred, the contents of

which were apparently briefed to McNamara and the JCS,
though hard copies of the intercepts were not provided to
those attending the meeting.—

Among the five evidentiary items then available
indicating that an attack had taken place, the only two
reliable pieces of information were SIGINT reports from
NS A. One was an intercept of a statement that a North
Vietnamese patrol boat had shot at U.S. aircraft. The
other, received via teletype two hours earlier, at two
thirty-three p.m., contained the text of a report by an
unidentified North Vietnamese command authority who
stated that his forces had “shot down two planes in the
battle area” and that “we have sacrificed two ships and all
the rest are okay.” At the end of the intercept was a report
that “the enemy ship could also have been damaged.”—
McNamara and the JCS knew from Herrick’s reports
from the Gulf of Tonkin that there were numerous
problems with the evidence cited above. Admiral James
Stockdale, then a navy pilot who flew from the
Ticonderogaihsii night, later disputed the navy’s official
position that pilots had seen the wakes of enemy torpedo
boats and gun flashes. A navy reconnaissance mission
flown the morning after the supposed battle found no
evidence of one, particularly oil slicks or debris that
would have supported the claim that the destroyers had
sunk one or more of the attacking North Vietnamese
ships. The sonar evidence was highly dubious. Detailed
examination of the reports of visual sightings turns up

numerous inconsistencies that in aggregate render these
reports less than reliable, especially since they were
“firmed up” after the JCS demanded conclusive proof that
an attack had taken place.—

The Fruit of the Poisoned Tree

This left the NS A intercepts as the sole remaining credible
evidence to support McNamara and the navy’s contention
that an attack had taken place. A declassified NS A history
notes, “The reliance on SIGINT even went to the extent of
overruling the commander on the scene. It was obvious to
the president and his advisors that there really had been an
attack — they had the North Vietnamese messages to
prove it.”—

But we now know that Johnson and McNamara got it
badly wrong in their headlong rush to launch the
retaliatory air strikes. The former head of the State
Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR),
Dr. Ray Cline, recalled that NS A fed the White House
and the Defense Department raw intercepts, which were
analyzed and evaluated by civilian officials and military
commanders with little or no background in intelligence,
much less SIGINT analysis. At no point were the SIGINT
specialists at NS A called upon to provide the benefit of
their deep knowledge of North Vietnamese
communications, nor were CIA intelligence analysts
called upon to provide an assessment of the intelligence

concerning the alleged August 4 naval engagement. Cline
later told an interviewer, “Everybody was demanding the
SIGINT; they wanted it quick, they didn’t want anybody
to take any time to analyze it.”—

McNamara’s proceeding solely on the basis of
/zAanalysis of the available SIGINT may go down in
history as one of the most serious mistakes made by a
senior U.S. government official. He ended up seeing what
he wanted to believe. Like a future secretary of
defensenamed Donald Rumsfeld, the intellectually gifted
McNamara made no secret of the fact that he thought he
was a better intelligence analyst than the men and women
at the CIA who had done it all their adult lives, a situation
exacerbated by his intense distrust of intelligence
professionals in general. In another interview, Cline said,
“I of course never had a lot of faith in Bob McNamara’s
judgment about intelligence. I think, like many policy
makers, he was too persuaded of his own ability to
analyze things correctly and he didn’t feel that
intelligence officers were very likely to tell him anything
he didn’t already know. Now, this is a congenital disease
among high-level policy makers.”—

If McNamara and the JCS had taken the time to look
long and hard at the intercepts on the afternoon of August
4, 1964, maybe history would be different, because there
were some significant problems with the intercepts if they
were to be taken as the most conclusive proof that an
attack had occurred that night.

For example, a halfway decent SIGINT analyst looking
at the scanty evidence would have immediately noticed
that there were no intercepts of North Vietnamese radio
traffic or radar emissions, such as one would expect to
find during the course of a heated naval battle, and such
as had been intercepted by NS A during the first Gulf of
Tonkin battle two days earlier. For the August 4
“Phantom Battle,” there were no comparable intercepts to
be found anywhere.— Former NS A officials indicated that
the traffic analysis reports produced by B Group at NS A
headquarters at Fort Meade after the battle showed only
routine radio activity within the North Vietnamese navy
radio grid on the night of August 4. North Vietnamese
naval traffic showed a heightened state of alert along the
coastline, almost certainly because of the continuing
OPLAN 34 A raids, but the NS A analysts could find no
indications of any spike in radio traffic that would have
been indicative of combat activity by North Vietnamese
naval units.—

In the absence of any other reliable SIGINT
information, the only piece of tangible evidence left was
the report by the unidentified North Vietnamese
command authority, which McNamara thought was an
after-action report on the August 4 naval battle. The
substance of the NS A translation is this:

We shot down two planes in the battle area, and one

other plane was damaged. We sacrificed two ships

and all the rest are okay. The combat spirit is very
high and we are starting out on the hunt and [are
waiting to] receive assignment. Men are very
confident because they themselves saw the enemy
planes sink. The enemy ship could also have been
damaged.—

But in fact the NS A translation does not reflect what the
navy listening post at San Miguel intercepted. In fact, the
San Miguel intercept reads as follows:

We shot at two enemy airplanes and at least one was
damaged. We sacrificed two comrades but all are
brave and recognize our obligation.—

It would seem that some unidentified person or persons
in the reporting unit of B Group, for reasons we can only
speculate about, not only changed the wording of the
translation and, in doing so, the import and meaning of
the text, but also changed the call signs used by the North
Vietnamese transmitter and recipient and reformatted the
message to include material not contained in the original
intercept. Sadly, the section of the NS A historian’s report
on how this could conceivably have happened at Fort
Meade was redacted by the NS A FOIA office. But more
important, the intercept could not have been an after-
action report because it was intercepted only an hour after
the destroyer Turner Joyopened fire, and the “battle”

raged for another two and a half hours. The only reason
McNamara thought it was an after-action report was
because he got it off the teletype from Fort Meade two
and a half hours after the battle in the Gulf of Tonkin was
over. Apparently McNamara did not bother to look at the
times contained in the intercept itself—

The Rush to Battle

In retrospect, it is clear that everyone in the White House
was in a hurry to act, and nobody seemed to want to take
the time to scrutinize the evidence that was available to
see if it justified going to war. After reviewing the
intelligence material for all of two full minutes. Secretary
McNamara and the JCS agreed that the evidence, in their
opinion, clearly indicated that an attack had taken place in
the Gulf of Tonkin on the night of August 4. At five
nineteen p.m. EDT (four nineteen a.m. GOT time, August
5), without waiting for additional information from
Captain Herrick in the gulf or conducting a detailed
assessment of the COMINT intercepts, McNamara
ordered that the air strikes be launched within two and a
half hours. —

At CINCPAC headquarters in Hawaii, a harried
Admiral Sharp was still trying to figure out what had
happened in the gulf from Herrick and the commander of
the Seventh Fleet in Japan when McNamara’s strike
execute order arrived on his desk. Finally, at about five

p.m. EDT, Sharp was given the COMINT intercepts
described above. After quickly scanning them with his
intelligence staff, at five twenty-three p.m. EDT Sharp
telephoned General David Burchinal at the Pentagon and
told him that the intercept concerning the “sacrifice of two
ships” had convinced him that the attack had taken place.
Sharp told Burchinal that the intercept “. . . pins it down
better than anything so far.” Burchinal asked Sharp,
“Indicates that [the North Vietnamese] were out there on
business, huh?” Sharp’s response was “Oh, yes. Very
definitely.” Burchinal agreed with Sharp’s assessment,
despite the fact that he had not yet seen the intercepts that
Sharp was referencing. The only “hof ’ item that Burchinal
had to pass on to Sharp from the Washington end was that
McNamara was “satisfied with the evidence.”—

At five thirty-four p.m. EDT, Sharp sent a FLASH-
precedence message to Herrick demanding a categorical
and unambiguous answer as to whether he could “confirm
absolutely” that the attack had taken place and that two
North Vietnamese vessels had been sunk during the
engagement.—

While Sharp was waiting for a reply from the Gulf of
Tonkin, a FLASH-precedence message from NS A arrived
in the Pentagon communications center. A report based
on intercepted Chinese air force radio traffic, it ominously
stated that the Chinese were in the process of sending a
unit of MiG fighters from an air base in southern China to

the North Vietnamese airfield at Dien Bien Phu.—

Twenty minutes later, Herrick sent Sharp a radio
message containing a qualified answer to his inquiries:

Turner Joy claims sinking one craft and damage to
another with gunfire. Damaged boat returned gunfire
— no hits. Turner Joy and other personnel observed
bursts and black smoke from hits on this boat. This
boat illuminated Turner Joy and his return fire was
observed and heard by T.J. personnel. Maddox
scored no known hits and never positively identified
a boat as such.

The first boat to close Maddox probably fired
torpedo at Maddox which was heard but not seen.
All subsequent Maddox torpedo reports are doubtful
in that it is suspected the sonarman was hearing the
ship’s own propeller beat reflected off rudders
during course changes (weaving). Turner Joy
detected 2 torpedo runs on her, one of which was
sighted visually passed down port side 3 to 5
hundred yards.

Weather was overcast with limited visibility. There
were no stars or moon resulting in almost total
darkness throughout action.—

Herrick’s report was filled with so many inconsistencies
that it served only to further muddy the waters, rather than
clear them up. Herrick knew when he sent it that his

report conflicted with a message sent by the captain of the
Turner Joy, which claimed to have sunk one enemy vessel
and damaged another. But in sum, Herrick told Sharp that
based on the information available to him, he believed
that the attack had taken place, subject to the
qualifications contained in the body of his report, but that
he would investigate further and provide more conclusive
proof if he could. After reading Herrick’s message, at six
p.m. EDT Sharp again called McNamara to tell him that
Herrick now was convinced that the attack had taken
place, but that there remained serious questions as to
whether the engagement had, putting in jeopardy the
retaliatory air strike.—

At six forty-five p.m. EDT, thirty-eight minutes after
McNamara had sent the air strike execute order to
CINCPAC, President Johnson met with sixteen senior
congressional leaders from both parties and briefed them
for ninety minutes, informing them that he had authorized
retaliatory air strikes against North Vietnam and would
seek a congressional resolution in support of his action.—

But the conflicting reports sent by the Maddoxdind the
Turner Jqyhad created consternation at the Pentagon and
at CINCPAC, both of which desperately wanted uniform
and consistent reports from both ships as to what had
occurred the previous night. Sharp sent a message to
Herrick asking, “Can you confirm that you were attacked
by PT or Swatow?” Herrick did not respond to the
request, but the captain of the Turner Jqyradioed at six ten

a.m. local time (seven ten p.m. EDT, August 4) that he
was convinced that an attack had taken place because a
lookout had reported seeing a torpedo wake.—

The mounting number of conflicting reports from the
Maddoxdind the Turner Joyonly created more concern at
higher headquarters. At eight a.m. GOT time, August 5,
the commander of the Seventh Fleet, Admiral Roy
Johnson, asked the captain of the Turner Joyiov the names
of the witnesses to the attack and an evaluation as to their
reliability. Thirty minutes later, Johnson ordered the
captains of the Maddoxdind the Turner JoyXo initiate a
search for debris that would prove that there had been a
battle on the night of the 4th. After a twenty-minute
search, both ships were forced to report that they had
found no debris at the alleged site of the sea battle.—

At ten thirty p.m. EDT on August 4, while navy
commanders in the Pacific were still furiously trying to
collect and collate the evidence. President Johnson went
on television to announce, “Air action is now in execution
against gunboats and certain supporting facilities in North
Vietnam.” As he spoke, sixty-four U.S. Navy fighter-
bombers from the aircraft carriers Ticonderogasind
Constellationstnxck North Vietnamese naval bases,
surface units, and oil storage depots, destroying or
damaging twenty-five patrol and torpedo boats and more
than 90 percent of North Vietnam’s petroleum storage
capacity. The toll for America, however, was heavy.
North Vietnamese antiaircraft gunners shot down two

navy fighter-bombers, resulting in the first American
prisoner of war (POW) and the first pilot confirmed dead
in the Vietnam War.

In the White House and the Pentagon’s haste to execute
the air strikes, nobody bothered to tell NS A that it was
happening. As NS A director Gordon Blake told an
interviewer, “the retaliation took everyone by surprise.
NSA wasn’t warned that there would be a retaliation. We
weren’t even able to readjust our [SIGINT] coverage in
order to see the effects of the retaliation.”—

On August 7, 1964, Congress nearly unanimously
approved what became known as the Gulf of Tonkin
Resolution, which authorized the president of the United
States to “take all necessary measures to repel any armed
attack against the forces of the United States,” thus
allowing the Johnson administration to expand the role of
American military forces in Southeast Asia.

Postscript

This was an intelligence disaster of epic proportions.
After all the available information is carefully reviewed
and the arguments on both sides given careful
consideration, the overwhelming weight of the evidence
now strongly indicates that there was no naval
engagement in the Gulf of Tonkin on the night of August
4, 1964.

Declassified documents reveal that President Johnson

secretly doubted whether a naval battle had actually taken
place. On September 19, he kicked off a meeting of his
national security advisers by telling them that he had
“some doubt as to whether there had in fact been any
vessels of any kind in the area.” Despite his doubts, that
afternoon the White House issued an unequivocal
statement that there had indeed been a naval battle that
fateful night.— As time went by, though, Johnson
exhibited increasing doubt as to the veracity of the NS A
radio intercepts that had been critically important in
justifying America’s entry into the Vietnam War. Years
after the Gulf of Tonkin incidents, Johnson would
occasionally tease Secretary McNamara about the
intercepts, chiding him with sarcastic jabs such as “Well,
those fish [certainly] were swimming,” or “Hell, those
dumb stupid sailors were just shooting at flying fish.”—

This opinion is now shared by the two on-scene U.S.
Navy commanders. Captains Herrick and Ogier (both
retired), and even by a repentant Robert Mc-Namara.—
Experts such as NS A deputy director Louis Tordella and
INR’s Ray Cline have concluded that the intercepts were
more likely puffed-up North Vietnamese postmortem
reports concerning the August 2 battle, rather than
descriptions of the events that allegedly took place on
August 4.—

Even at NS A, there was much skepticism at the time
about the veracity of the intelligence that the agency had

provided that justified America’s entering the Vietnam
War. Frank Austin, the chief of NSA’s B Group, which
was responsible for all communist Asian targets, was,
according to a declassified NS A history, “skeptical from
the morning of 5 August,” as was Colonel John Morrison,
the head of NS A Pacific in Hawaii, who wrote a lengthy
and critical analysis of the NS A reporting, questioning
whether an attack had taken place.— A declassified
agency history of the affair notes, “The NS A analyst who
looked at the traffic believed that the whole thing was a
mistake. The [intercepted] messages almost certainly
referred to other activity — the 2 August attack and the
Desoto patrols. The White House had started a war on the
basis of unconfirmed (and later-to-be-determined
probably invalid) information.” —

It was not until 2000 that NS A historian Dr. Robert
Hanyok wrote a detailed study of the Gulf of Tonkin
incidents for an internal NS A publication; it concludes, on
the basis of a review of over one hundred NS A reports
that somehow never found their way to the White House,
that the August 4, 1964, Gulf of Tonkin incident never
happened. Hanyok’ s conclusions are sobering: “Through
a compound of analytic errors and an unwillingness to
consider contrary evidence, American SIGINT elements
in the region and at NS A [headquarters] reported Hanoi’s
plans to attack the two ships of the Desoto patrol.

Further analytic errors and an obscuring of other
information led to publication of more ‘evidence.’ In

truth, Hanoi’s navy was engaged in nothing that night but
the salvage of two of the boats damaged on 2 August.”
Hanyok’s controversial top-secret report alleges that NS A
officials withheld 90 percent of the SIGINT about the
Gulf of Tonkin attacks in their possession, and instead
gave the White House only what it wanted to hear. He
concludes that “only SIGINT that supported the claim that
the communists had attacked the two destroyers was
given to administration officials.”—

But whatever doubts may have existed in August 1964
about the credibility of the evidence provided by NS A
about the Gulf of Tonkin naval engagement, in the end it
really did not matter. It was no secret that, wanting to
“look tough” in an election year, Johnson administration
officials were looking for a casus belli for attacking North
Vietnam. So President Johnson, Secretary of Defense
McNamara, and the JCS appear to have cherry-picked the
available intelligence, in this case SIGINT from NS A, in
order to justify a decision they had already made to
launch air strikes against North Vietnam. Ray Cline stated
that Johnson and McNamara “were dying to get those air
attacks off and did finally send them off with a pretty
fiizzy understanding of what had really happened.”— The
final word goes to an NS A historian, who concluded,
“The administration had decided that expansion of
American involvement would be necessary. Had the 4
August incident not occurred, something else would

have.’

CHAPTER 7

The Wilderness of Pain
NSA and the Vietnam War: 1964-1969

A man ’s judgment is no better than his
information.

—LYNDON JOHNSON, 1968

Flying Blind

Recently declassified documents make clear that
everything we thought we knew about the role of NSA in
the Vietnam War needs to be reconsidered. One fact kept
a secret until now was that after the North Vietnamese
and Viet Cong converted all their communications to
unbreakable cipher systems in April 1962, as described in
chapter 5, NSA was never again able to read any high-
level enemy communications traffic except for very brief
periods of time. Throughout the war, the North
Vietnamese and Viet Cong constantly changed and
improved their high-level diplomatic and military cipher
systems, in the process killing off the few cryptanalytic
successes that NSA enjoyed. As a declassified NSA

history notes, “it was not the sophistication of Hanoi’s
cryptography that hindered cryptanalysis, but the short
shelf-life of its systems. Even then, the time between
intercept and decryption was still months.”- At some
point in the mid-1960s, NS A made the controversial
decision to give up altogether on its efforts to crack the
high-level North Vietnamese ciphers and instead focus its
resources on solving lower-level enemy military codes
used on the battlefield in South Vietnam and on traffic
analysis.-

Since NS A could not provide any high-level
intelligence about the strategic intentions of Ho Chi Minh
and the rest of the North Vietnamese leadership, the U.S.
government found itself repeatedly and unpleasantly
surprised by the actions of the North Vietnamese and Viet
Cong. Failing to forecast the North Vietnamese-Viet
Cong 1968 Tet Offensive was perhaps the worst U.S.
intelligence failure, one that occurred in part because, per
a 1968 CIA postmortem report, '‘high-level Communist
communications” were “for the most part unreadable''
(italics added). -

NSA’s best intelligence was derived from reading the
diplomatic traffic of foreign countries like Brazil and
Indonesia, which maintained embassies in Hanoi. The
cable traffic of foreign journalists visiting Hanoi was also
a useful source of information. For example, in 1968 NSA
intercepted a message from a Japanese journalist in Hanoi

to his home office in Tokyo reporting that he had
interviewed and photographed a number of American
POWs held by the North Vietnamese.-

The North Vietnamese Enter the War in the

South

Immediately after the Gulf of Tonkin incidents, the U.S.
intelligence community tasked NS A with intensifying its
SIGINT coverage of both Viet Cong (VC) radio traffic
inside South Vietnam and North Vietnamese Army
(NVA) communications north of the DMZ. The agency’s
monitoring of VC Morse code communications traffic
quickly identified a number of major enemy corps and
division- size headquarters staffs covering all of South
Vietnam. NS A also began closely monitoring the radio
traffic of the NVA unit that ran the entire army logistics
infrastructure in North Vietnam and Laos, the General
Directorate of Rear Services (GDRS). GDRS was a
critically important target because it was responsible for
moving men and supplies down the Ho Chi Minh Trail
from North Vietnam through southern Laos and
Cambodia into South Vietnam.-

Within weeks of initiating intercept coverage of GDRS,
NS A began intercepting message traffic suggesting that
elements of a regular North Vietnamese Army unit, the
325th NVA Division, had begun preparing to cross into
southern Laos from their home base in Dong Hoi in North

Vietnam. In November 1964, SIGINT confirmed that an
enemy radio station operating along the Ho Chi Minh
Trail in southern Laos had suddenly converted its radio
operating procedures to those used by regular NVA units.
A few weeks later, in December, CIA “road watch” teams
in southern Laos spotted several battalions of regular
North Vietnamese troops moving down the Ho Chi Minh
Trail in the direction of South Vietnam. In the ensuing
months, traffic analysis coming out of NS A tracked the
movement of the 325th NVA Division through the Mu
Gia Pass and southern Laos and into South Vietnam.
Although U.S. Army direction-finding assets confirmed
the presence of this division in the Central Highlands of
South Vietnam in January 1965, the Military Assistance
Command Vietnams’ (MACV) intelligence staff in
Saigon refused to accept the presence of NVA regular
forces in the country because it had not been confirmed
by POWs or captured documents. It was not until early
February that MACV finally agreed that the headquarters
of the 325th NVA Division plus a subordinate regiment
were in the Central Highlands.-

The Opening of the Ground War in South

Vietnam

In South Vietnam, the ground war was moving into a new
and more lethal phase. The initial landing of U.S. Marines
took place in March 1965, and by June the entire Third

Marine Amphibious Force was operating in the northern
part of South Vietnam, based in the city of Da Nang. In
July 1965, the first U.S. Army combat unit, the First
Cavalry Division (Airmobile), arrived in South Vietnam.
As the number of U.S. combat troops in South Vietnam
rose steadily, so did the number and intensity of North
Vietnamese and Viet Cong attacks. Forces on both sides
began maneuvering for advantage, shadowboxing while
waiting for the other side to make the first decisive move.

The first battle of the new “American phase” in the
Vietnam War began in August. Early that month, U.S.
Army airborne radio direction finding (ARDF) aircraft
flying routine SIGINT collection missions over the
northern portion of South Vietnam picked up a heavy
volume of Viet Cong Morse code radio messages coming
from just south of the Marine Corps base at Chu Lai. By
mid- August, the ARDF aircraft had discovered the source
of the Morse code transmissions and the identity of the
Viet Cong unit sending the messages. The transmitter
belonged to the headquarters of the two-thousand-man
First Viet Cong Regiment, which was secretly
concentrating its forces on the Van Tuong Peninsula,
fifteen miles south of Chu Lai. The information was fed
to General Lewis Walt, commander of the Third Marine
Amphibious Force, who immediately initiated a search-
and-destroy operation against the VC regiment.
Designated Operation Starlight, it commenced on August
18. A marine battalion quickly penned the VC regiment

up against the sea, while another marine battalion landed
on the peninsula and began wiping out the trapped Viet
Cong forces. By August 24, the marines reported that they
had destroyed two battalions of the VC regiment, killing
an estimated seven hundred Viet Cong troops. On the
negative side, over two hundred marines had been killed
or wounded in the fierce fighting. Despite the heavy
casualty toll, NS A officials considered the success of
Operation Starlight to be SIGINT’s most important
accomplishment in Vietnam up until that point. -
Unfortunately, as was too often the case during the war,
the use of body count metrics to measure success during
Operation Starlight produced a chimera. In fact, SIGINT
showed that the majority of the First Viet Cong Regiment
had somehow managed to escape from the Van Tuong
Peninsula. According to a declassified NS A history, radio
intercepts showed that “within two days of the battle, the
First Regiment’s radio network was back on the air.”-
Two months later, in October, three regiments of the
325th NVA Division launched an offensive in the Central
Highlands with the objective of cutting the country in
half. In this first offensive in the south, NVA regulars
scored a quick victory at the Plei Mei Special Forces
camp, twenty-five miles south of the city of Pleiku, but
then were forced to retreat up the nearby la Drang Valley
when confronted by a strong force of American
infantrymen belonging to the newly arrived First Cavalry
Division (Airmobile), commanded by Major General

Harry Kinnard.

As the 325th NVA Division retreated deeper into the la
Drang Valley, it was shadowed by five ARDF aircraft
tracking the locations of the radio signals of the division’s
commander and his subordinate regimental commanders,
which enabled Kinnard’ s forces to leapfrog up the valley
in their Huey he licopters, harrying the retreating division
every chance they got. At about four thirty a.m. on
November 14, a tactical SIGINT intercept team attached
to the First Battalion, Seventh Cavalry, intercepted a
transmission indicating that a battalion of the 325th NVA
Division (the Ninth Infantry Battalion of the Sixty-sixth
NVA Regiment) was trapped at the base of the Chu Pong
Massif Acting on this intelligence, at eleven a.m.
helicopters dropped the 450 men of the First Battalion,
Seventh Cavalry, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel
Harold Moore, at landing zone (LZ) X-Ray, in front of the
Chu Pong Massif, to destroy the enemy force. -

But SIGINT can sometimes be wrong. As immortalized
in the book and movie We Were Soldiers Once . . . and
Young, Hal Moore discovered almost immediately that he
was facing not an NVA battalion, but rather two full
regiments of the 325th NVA Division. Two days of fierce
and bloody fighting ensued, much of it hand-to-hand.
When it was over, both of the NVA regiments had for all
intents and purposes been destroyed, with the survivors
retreating across the border into Cambodia. But the Battle
of LZ X-Ray, the first engagement of the Vietnam War

between American and North Vietnamese troops, showed
that the North Vietnamese could stand and fight against
the better- armed Americans.

As in Operation Starlight, SIGINT’s performance
during the Battle of the la Drang Valley was not a
complete success, with a declassified NS A history
reporting, “At least four times during the struggle. South
Vietnamese and American units had been ambushed by
large communist units — twice during helicopter landings
— and SIGINT had been unable to detect the traps.” The
lesson learned from these two battles was that SIGINT
was an imperfect intelligence source if used all by itself,
without supporting intelligence from agents, POWs, and
captured documents. Sadly, as we shall see, this simple
truth was forgotten by later generations of senior U.S.
field commanders in Vietnam.—

SIGINT Successes in the Ground War in

South Vietnam

While the Rolling Thunder bombing campaign in North
Vietnam continued into 1966, in South Vietnam NSA was
beginning to rack up some impressive gains. The list of
the agency’s targets grew rapidly in response to
customers’ demands for more and better intelligence,
including information on the deployments and movements
of North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces down to the
tactical level. North Vietnamese fighter activities and

surface-to-air missile locations and readiness levels,
Soviet and Chinese weapon and supply shipments to
North Vietnam, North Vietnamese weather forecasts, civil
aviation flights, and on and on.

And despite its inability to crack the North Vietnamese
military’s high-level ciphers, NSA was increasingly able
to produce vast quantities of intelligence about the North
Vietnamese and to a lesser degree the Viet Cong forces
operating inside South Vietnam by cracking their low-
level cipher systems, as well as making use of
increasingly expert traffic analysis and direction-finding
data obtained by army and air force ARDF aircraft.
Throughout the war, according to a declassified NSA
history, “American and Allied cryptologists would be able
to exploit lower level communist cryptographic systems,
that is, more precisely, ciphers and codes used by
operational and tactical-level units, usually regiment and
below, on an almost routine basis. In fact, the volume of
the so-called low-to-medium-grade systems exploited by
NSA was so great that by 1968 the exploitation had to be
automated.”—

This success quickly translated into better intelligence
about the strength and capabilities of the enemy. A
declassified May 1966 Defense Intelligence Agency
(DIA) order of battle estimate of the North Vietnamese
military shows that SIGINT was able to identify the
locations of virtually every major North Vietnamese
combat unit stationed in North and South Vietnam, as

well as the locations and complete aircraft inventory for
every regiment in the North Vietnamese air force.—

On the battlefield in South Vietnam, SIGINT quickly
outstripped other intelligence sources in its ability to find
and accurately track the movements of the ever-elusive
North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces, which made
destroying them immeasurably easier. Jim Lairson, an
army Morse intercept operator based at the huge Phu Bai
listening post, in northern South Vietnam, recalled an
incident in February 1966, when the intercepts of the Viet
Cong combat unit he was assigned to monitor began
moving inexorably toward his post. He remembered, “The
[enemy] operator I was copying got frustrated with [his]
control and switched from coded to plain text. Our
translator was standing behind me and as I typed Phu Bai
on the paper. I got the word. There were three battalions
of Viet Cong coming at us.” The approaching enemy
force was immediately hit by dozens of bombs dropped
by an on-call force of U.S. Air Force fighter-bombers, and
the threat to the base passed.—

One of the most skilled users of SIGINT in Vietnam
was Major General William DePuy. Commander of the
First Infantry Division, based north of Saigon, he owed
his skills largely to his experience in the intelligence field
before coming to Vietnam. In July 1966, army ARDF
aircraft located the headquarters of the 272nd Regiment of
the Ninth Viet Cong Division near the village of Minh
Thanh, in Tay Ninh Province near the Cambodian border.

In the resulting battle, troops belonging to DePuy’s
division surprised the Viet Cong regiment, killing three
hundred VC soldiers and putting the entire Ninth VC
Division out of action for the next three and a half
months.—

Three weeks later, in August, U.S. Air Force EC-47
ARDF aircraft flying over Quang Tri Province, in the
northernmost part of South Vietnam, intercepted the
largest number of NVA transmitter fixes found in the
DMZ since America’s entry into the war. The radio
emitters belonged to the North Vietnamese 324B
Division, which was in the process of trying to flee back
across the DMZ into North Vietnam after being mauled
by U.S. Marine Corps units earlier that month. B-52
bombers were called in to plaster the locations of the
324B Division with carpet bombing. Hundreds of NVA
troops died in the resulting conflagration of high-
explosive ordnance and napalm. The director of
intelligence of U.S. Pacific Command reported on
September 29, “Without [EC-47 ’s] work and that of more
sensitive intelligence [SIGINT], we would be completely
in the dark about the enemy situation in the DMZ.”—

But getting better at finding the enemy was just one of
NSA’s big successes that year. After months of dissecting
intercepted North Vietnamese and Viet Cong radio traffic,
in early 1966 NSA SIGINT analysts figured out that prior
to every enemy attack, the North Vietnamese and Viet
Cong radio operators made significant changes to their

transmitting procedures, including changing their radio
frequencies, cipher systems, and call signs, as well as
establishing special backup radio centers and forward
command centers that only appeared in North Vietnamese
radio traffic just prior to attacks. Radio traffic volumes
also shot up dramatically, as did the number of high-
precedence messages being sent and received. With this
analytic breakthrough, the SIGINT analysts could predict,
sometimes weeks in advance, when and where the enemy
intended to launch an offensive, which units were going
to participate in the attack, and even what their objectives
were. It would prove to be a hugely important
development that would cost the North Vietnamese and
Viet Cong forces dearly in the years that followed, as
American combat forces were able to parry the enemy
blow and frustrate enemy commanders time after time.—
For example, in March 1966 SIGINT detected radio
transmitters associated with a high-level North
Vietnamese command unit plus intelligence units moving
toward the cities of Pleiku and Kontum, in the Central
Highlands, suggesting that the North Vietnamese were
gearing up for an attack on the cities. The U.S. Twenty-
fifth Infantry Division was sent into the region to preempt
the attack, forcing the North Vietnamese units to retreat
back to their base areas in Cambodia after two months of
battle. Then in June 1966, another radio transmitter
belonging to a North Vietnamese high-level headquarters
was detected approaching the highlands city of Dak To.

This time, units of the 101st Airborne Division were sent
in to clear out the North Vietnamese, who were forced to
withdraw in July. In October 1966, SIGINT detected the
arrival of the NVA 324B Division in Quang Tri Province,
south of the DMZ. By November, elements of the NVA
341st Division had crossed the DMZ into Quang Tri. The
North Vietnamese intended either to launch a major
offensive or to create a stronghold in the region south of
the DMZ. In the battle that followed, U.S. Marine units
badly mauled the North Vietnamese division with the help
of massive B-52 Arc Light air strikes.—

As exemplified by the above, SIGINT proved to be
instrumental in foiling virtually every North Vietnamese
offensive during 1966 and in the years that followed, with
some notable exceptions, such as the 1968 Tet Offensive,
which is discussed later in this chapter. The North
Vietnamese offensive efforts in 1966 resulted in no
tangible ground gains, but yielded massive casualties
among their troops. One has to wonder if the North
Vietnamese military leadership ever stopped to question
how the Americans always seemed to know what their
plans were. This may also have been the high point of the
American SIGINT effort in Vietnam.

Pound Them into the Dirt

For NS A, the year 1967 was marked by one resounding
success after another on the Vietnamese battlefield. In

April, SIGINT detected a large North Vietnamese troop
buildup in northern Quang Tri Province, south of the
DMZ, with radio intercepts confirming that the entire
North Vietnamese 325C Division had moved into the
region. Other data appearing in SIGINT indicated that the
NVA intended to launch an offensive to liberate Quang
Tri and neighboring Thua Thien Province as early as
June. Guided to their targets with unerring accuracy by
NS A information, B-52 bombers and navy and air force
fighter-bombers smashed the North Vietnamese troop
buildup. The bombers were followed by a large force of
U.S. Marine Corps infantry backed by tanks, artillery, and
air support. The 325C Division was for all intents and
purposes wiped out as an effective military unit in the
fighting.—

Beginning in September, SIGINT detected another
dramatic increase in the number of North Vietnamese
radio transmitters operating along the DMZ and in the A
Shau Valley, just to the south. New North Vietnamese
combat units were quickly identified in the area south of
the DMZ by SIGINT. This material, when matched with
captured documents and information received from POWs
and defectors, led intelligence analysts in Washington to
conclude that rates of North Vietnamese infiltration into
these two areas had reached invasion levels. The State
Department’s intelligence staff issued a highly classified
report warning that SIGINT showed that four new North
Vietnamese regiments had just arrived, or were about to

arrive, in the area just south of the DMZ. But MACV
refused to accept the presence of thesenew units because,
once again, the SIGINT data had not been confirmed by
captured documents or by prisoners.—

Despite the nagging doubts of General William
Westmoreland’s intelligence chief. General Phillip
Davidson, about the validity of much of the intelligence
data he was getting from Fort Meade, SIGINT continued
to rack up more impressive successes. In October,
SIGINT collected by the U.S. Army listening post in
Pleiku revealed that the North Vietnamese First Division
had just crossed into South Vietnam from Laos and had
massed near Dak To, a key garrison located northwest of
Pleiku. In late October, an accumulation of radio
intercepts showed that an attack on Dak To was
imminent, as evidenced by a dramatic surge in the volume
of North Vietnamese radio transmissions coming from the
Dak To area from normal twice-a-day contacts to once an
hour. On November 1, elements of the U.S. Fourth
Infantry Division and the 1 73rd Airborne Brigade were
moved to Dak To so as to preempt the anticipated North
Vietnamese attack. The enemy offensive began on
November 7. The battle raged for ten days, after which
the battered First NVA Division broke off the engagement
and retreated into Cambodia. The casualty counts on both
sides were massive, with 280 American paratroopers
killed and 500 wounded in the battle. No one knows for
sure how many North Vietnamese soldiers were killed or

wounded, but MACV estimated that 2,100 North
Vietnamese were killed.—

The Battle of Dak To was considered by many senior
American military commanders in Vietnam to have been
SIGINT’s brightest-shining moment up until that point in
the war. But it was almost instantly eclipsed by an even
more significant cryptologic breakthrough.

The “Vinh Window”

In October 1967, while the Battle of Dak To was still
raging, radio intercept operators aboard a U.S. Air Force
C-130 SIGINT aircraft orbiting over the Gulf of Tonkin
intercepted a new North Vietnamese radio net carrying
what seemed to be routine voice communications. The
intercept tapes were brought back to the U.S. Army
listening post at Phu Bai, where Vietnamese linguists
pored over them. Their analysis of the tapes showed that
the North Vietnamese radio operators were passing
mundane information concerning low-level logistical
matters over a newly constructed microwave radio-relay
system linking the North Vietnamese coastal cities of
Thanh Hoa and Vinh. Situated just above the DMZ, Vinh
was the location of a huge North Vietnamese logistics
center supplying the entire Ho Chi Minh Trail. From that
point onward, C-130 SIGINT aircraft began regularly
flying orbits off the North Vietnamese coast targeting
these en clair radio transmissions. Then in November, the

nature of the traffic being carried on this radio net
changed, with intercepts revealing that the North
Vietnamese radio operators were now sending complete
rundowns on the number of infiltration groups about to be
sent down the Ho Chi Minh Trail from the Vinh base
area. It was an incredible find. NSA’s analysts now could
determine how many NVA infiltration packets were
traversing the Ho Chi Minh Trail, as well as the size of
the infiltration groups and their destination inside South
Vietnam. In short, what NS A called the “Vinh Window”
appeared to be an intelligence bonanza of unprecedented
proportions.—

President Lyndon Johnson and his national security
advisor Walt Rostow were euphoric when they were
briefed about the breakthrough by NS A officials in early
1968. Everyone from the president on down suddenly
believed that at last the United States could attack the
North Vietnamese infiltration route down the Ho Chi
Minh Trail. A declassified NS A history states, “At the
White House, there was a sense that this intelligence
breakthrough was the key [to the strategy of stopping
infiltration].”—

But sadly, the Vinh Window ultimately proved in many
respects to be a bust. NS A oversold the value of this
SIGINT product to its customers, promising them that the
agency would be able to give them exact locations for the
North Vietnamese infiltration groups moving down the
Ho Chi Minh Trail. NSA’s air force and navy customers

complained when the agency was unable to produce this
kind of intelligence from the intercepts. In addition, the
thousands of hours of intercepted North Vietnamese voice
traffic produced every month by American SIGINT
reconnaissance aircraft orbiting over Laos and the Gulf of
Tonkin swamped NSA’s small cadre of Vietnamese
linguists, and a proposal to use South Vietnamese
personnel to transcribe the tapes was rejected for security
reasons. As a result, a massive backlog of hundreds of
Vinh Window intercept tapes quickly built up, which, by
the time they were finally transcribed, analyzed, and
reported, were already obsolete. As a declassified NS A
history puts it, “What ever tactical advantage that could
have been gotten from the exploitation of the GDRS voice
communications would never be realized. Like the
proverbial children at the candy store, American
intelligence could only press its face against the Vinh
Window and imagine the opportunity . . . the true goodies
remained beyond our touch.”—

A Victim of Its Own Success

Despite the widespread disappointment that the Vinh
Window intercepts did not allow the U.S. military to shut
down the Ho Chi Minh Trail, by the end of 1967 NSA
had become a superstar, albeit a secret one, in Vietnam.
U.S. military field commanders in Southeast Asia were
gushing in their praise of SIGINT. General Bruce Palmer

Jr., the army’s vice chief of staff, told a gathering of
senior officers that SIGINT was for his commanders in
Vietnam “the backbone of their intelligence effort. They
could not live or fight without it.” Palmer was not
overstating the case. Declassified documents reveal that
SIGINT was the primary driver of U.S. Army combat
operations in Vietnam, providing anywhere from 40 to 90
percent of the intelligence available to U.S. forces about
the strength and capabilities of the enemy forces facing
them. Over half of all major U.S. Army offensive
operations launched in 1965 and 1966 had been triggered
by intelligence coming from SIGINT.—

With each new success, senior army commanders in
Vietnam became increasingly enamored of this seemingly
magical fount of knowledge, and in the process cast aside
the more conventional sources of intelligence, such as
POW interrogations and agent operations. The result was
that by 1967 dependence on SIGINT was so high that an
American intelligence officer who served in Vietnam told
a congressional committee that American military
commanders in Vietnam were “getting SIGINT with their
orange juice every morning and have now come to expect
it everywhere.”—

But hidden behind the scenes, a tide of discontent was
rising within the U.S. military and intelligence
communities regarding this source, among both those
officials who had access to the material and those who did
not. Meanwhile, there was also a rising tide of antiwar

sentiment in the United States, creating an increasingly
intractable problem for the Johnson administration. By
1966, public opinion had begun to turn against the war,
even though the military continued to insist that the
United States was winning. Army and marine casualties
were mounting, and by the end of 1966 almost five
hundred American aircraft had been lost and hundreds of
pilots and crew killed or captured and held as POWs
under terrible conditions. The next year saw an increase in
public demonstrations against the war and less than 50
percent of Americans supporting the way the war was
being conducted. Time was not working in favor of
Johnson. Nevertheless, he continued to believe what he
heard from his top commander in Vietnam, General
Westmoreland. Apart from the metric of body count, the
military increasingly depended on various forms of
intelligence — above all SIGINT — to know whether or
not the United States really was winning, and to anticipate
and counter relentless enemy pressure, from both the VC
and the NVA.

Among the select few senior U.S. government officials
and top American commanders with unfettered access to
SIGINT, many were worried that the U.S. military in
Vietnam had become far too dependent on SIGINT.
General Palmer, who valued it so highly at the time, years
later wrote that by 1968 MACV was largely reliant on
SIGINT as its primary source of intelligence on enemy
movements and activities, and consequently placed less

importance on HUMINT, POWs, and captured
documents.— NS A historians generally agree with
Palmer’s assessment; one writes, “SIGINT had only part
of the picture, and intelligence analysts relied too heavily
on the single source. In hindsight, it is clear that too little
attempt was made to flesh out the rest of the picture
through interrogations, captured documents, and the like.
SIGINT became the victim of its own success.” —

SIGINT generated so much information that the
overworked intelligence analysts in Washington and
Saigon were buried by the mass of intercepts being
produced every day, and as time went by, it became
increasingly difficult to ascertain what was important and
what was not. In addition, the military command
bureaucracy in Southeast Asia was so dense and
multilayered that critical intelligence reporting oftentimes
failed to make it from the SIGINT collection units in the
field to the military commanders they were supposed to
support in a timely manner, or fashioned in such a way
that it could be immediately acted upon by field
commanders.—

And army and marine field commanders at the corps
and division levels who did have access to SIGINT failed
to use it properly. Many had little or no knowledge of, or
prior experience with, SIGINT and therefore were
suspicious of a source that they did not control, much less
understand. The list of senior army commanders who

went to Vietnam knowing next to nothing about SIGINT
is staggering. General Creighton Abrams Jr. admitted, “It
has been my feeling in years past that we did not know
too much about ASA [Army Security Agency].” The
military services were largely to blame for failing to
educate their senior officers in the fundamentals of this
vitally important battlefield intelligence source, especially
given how crucial SIGINT had proved to be during the
Korean War. But NS A also bears a large part of the blame
because of the agency’s insistence that all aspects of
SIGINT “sources and methods” be kept a secret from all
but those few officers deemed to have a need to know.—

The Tet Offensive

Back at NSA’s Indochina Office (B6) at Fort Meade,
while the Battle of Dak To was raging and the Vinh
Window was just opening up, a number of disturbing
signs were beginning to appear in intercepts arriving via
teletype from Southeast Asia. Beginning in late October
1967 and continuing through November, SIGINT
detected elements of two crack North Vietnamese
divisions, the 304th and the 320th, and three independent
regiments departing their home bases in North Vietnam
and moving onto the Ho Chi Minh Trail in southern Laos.
This was the first time ever that NS A analysts had seen
two North Vietnamese divisions moving onto the trail at
the same time. By mid-December, the troops had been

tracked by SIGINT to staging areas around the southern
Laos city of Tchepone, just across the border from the
U.S. Marine Corps firebase at Khe Sanh.—

Then during the first week of January 1968, radio
transmitters belonging to two regiments of a third North
Vietnamese division, the 325C, were detected operating
north and west of Khe Sanh. At the same time, SIGINT
monitored the first two divisions surging across the border
into South Vietnam and taking up positions south and east
of the firebase. The marines inside the base were now
surrounded by vastly superior enemy forces. Everyone
from President Johnson down to General Westmoreland
in Saigon immediately assumed that the North
Vietnamese were about to launch a major offensive to
take the base.—

But the ominous portents continued to build in the days
that followed. By mid-January, SIGINT showed that there
were three NVA division headquarters and at least seven
regiments totaling more than fifteen thousand enemy
troops deployed around the Marine Corps firebase. To the
south of Khe Sanh, in the Central Highlands, an
accumulation of intercepted radio traffic passing between
the North Vietnamese B-3 Front headquarters and its
subordinate divisions indicated that the North Vietnamese
were preparing to attack a number of cities in Kontum,
Pleiku, and Darlac Provinces. To the east along the coast,
SIGINT detected the North Vietnamese Second Division
moving southeast to staging positions outside the city of

Hue, the largest urban center in northern South Vietnam.
Within a matter of days, the huge NS A listening post at
Phu Bai was monitoring North Vietnamese and Viet Cong
radio transmissions coming from just outside Hue itself.
Phu Bai and NSA’s other listening posts in South
Vietnam detected a dramatic increase in the volume of
radio traffic passing along critical North Vietnamese and
Viet Cong communications links throughout South
Vietnam, much of it high-precedence messages.
Unfortunately, NS A could not read the codes the
messages were enciphered with. On January 17, NSA
issued an intelligence report warning that there was now
firm evidence that the North Vietnamese were preparing
to launch an offensive in Pleiku Province, in the Central
Highlands.— Westmoreland and the U.S. embassy in
Saigon interpreted this as an indication that the offensive
would target the Central Highlands and Khe Sanh, just
south of the DMZ, an opinion shared by President
Johnson and his senior advisers. But at this stage, there
were no reliable indications whatsoever coming from
SIGINT or any other intelligence source to suggest that
the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong intended to mount
any offensive operation south of the highlands.—

The suspicions of the White House and Westmoreland
about the enemy’s intentions were apparently confirmed
when on January 21 three battalions of the North
Vietnamese 325C Division launched a two-pronged
assault on marine defensive positions to the north and

south of the besieged Khe Sanh firebase. The North
Vietnamese overran the village of Khe Sanh itself, but the
attacks on the base were repulsed. In response, a marine
battalion was hastily flown in along with much-needed
supplies, bringing the size of the marine garrison to over
six thousand combat troops.

But at the same time that NS A was reporting on the
North Vietnamese military buildup in northern South
Vietnam and the Central Highlands, SIGINT collected in
dependently by the radio intercept units belonging to the
ASA’s 303rd Radio Research Battalion at Long Binh,
outside Saigon, revealed a dramatic surge in the number
of Viet Cong radio transmissions coming from the area
surrounding Saigon, with many of the transmissions
originating closer to Saigon than heretofore had been
noted. By January 15, army intelligence analysts had
concluded that three North Vietnamese and Viet Cong
divisions, which had previously been noted in Cambodia
in late December 1967, were now confirmed by SIGINT
as being deployed in an arc around Saigon within easy
striking distance of the South Vietnamese capital.—

During the ten-day period between January 15 and
January 25, NSA listening posts in Southeast Asia
intercepted what is described in a declassified report as an
“almost unprecedented volume of urgent messages . . .
passing among major [enemy] commands.” There were
other equally troubling portents appearing in intercepts of
low-level North Vietnamese radio traffic. North

Vietnamese units throughout South Vietnam were
changing en masse their radio frequencies and
cryptographic systems, activating forward command posts
and emergency radio nets, and North Vietnamese
intelligence teams were detected in SIGINT
reconnoitering target areas throughoutSouih Vietnam.
The possibility of a major enemy offensive in South
Vietnam had now become a probability. An internal NS A
history notes, “Never before had the indicators been so
ubiquitous and unmistakable. A storm was about to break
over South Vietnam.”—

On January 25, NSA sent a report to MACV titled
Coordinated Vietnamese Communist Offensive Evidenced
in South Vietnam, the lead conclusion of which was this:

During the past week, SIGINT has provided
evidence of a coordinated attack to occur in the near
future in several areas of South Vietnam. While the
bulk of SIGINT evidence indicates the most critical
areas to be in the northern half of the country, there
is some additional evidence that Communist units in
Nam Bo [the southern half of South Vietnam] may
also be involved. The major target areas of enemy
offensive operations include the Western Highlands,
the coast provinces of Military Region (MR) 5, and
the Khe Sanh and Hue areas.—

Thanks to newly declassified documents, we now know

that NSA’s warning message was either ignored,
misunderstood, or misapplied by the White House, the
CIA, and MACV. The crux of the problem was that senior
officials at MACV, in General Bruce Palmer’s opinion as
expressed in a later declassified CIA study, “flatly did not
believe that the enemy had either the strength or the
command and control capability to launch a nationwide
coordinated offensive.” George Carver Jr., the CIA’s
special adviser for Vietnamese affairs, also refused to
accept warnings from his junior analysts because,
according to the study, he “did not fully buy the thesis
that the coming offensive would be an all-out affair of
great portent.”— The January 28, 1968, edition of the
CIA’s Central Intelligence BulletincommQniQd, “It is not
yet possible to determine if the enemy is indeed planning
an all-out, country-wide offensive during, or just
following, the Tet holiday period.”—

General Westmoreland told Washington he was
convinced that NSA’s intelligence about possible
widespread attacks merely reflected a North Vietnamese
attempt to divert his attention from the real objective —
Khe Sanh. Ultimately, however, the North
Vietnamesenever mounted a major attack on Khe Sanh
coinciding with the launch of the Tet Offensive.—

In the days that followed, NS A intercept sites in
Southeast Asia continued to pick up further “hard”
indications that the North Vietnamese offensive was

about to be unleashed, including one intercept on January
28, which revealed that “N-day” for the kickoff of the
North Vietnamese offensive in the Central Highlands was
going to be January 30, at three a.m., less than forty-eight
hours away. This report was deemed to be so important
that it went straight to President Johnson.—

But the Defense Intelligence Agency believed that the
North Vietnamese and Viet Cong would wait until after
the end of the Tet holiday to launch their offensive. So
DIA too discounted NSA’s warnings, and its analysts
wrote in the January 29, 1968, daily DIA summary,
“Indications point to N-Day being scheduled in the Tet
period, but it still seems likely that the Communists would
wait until after the holiday to carry out a plan'' (italics
added).—

Then, on the night of January 29-30, a U.S. Army
SIGINT specialist named David Parks and his partner
were manning a radio direction-finding post at Bien Hoa
air base, outside Saigon, just as the Tet holiday began.
Parks later recounted, “About midnight, every VC/NVA
radio in the country went silent, ‘Nil More Heard’ for
sure! We could not raise a ditty bop for love nor money. It
was the damnedest thing I ever didn'thQdiV. Complete
radio silence.”—

Three hours later, at three a.m. on January 30, 1968,
over one hundred thousand North Vietnamese and Viet
Cong troops launched a massive and coordinated

offensive against virtually all cities, towns, and major
military bases throughout South Vietnam, attacking
thirty-eight of the country’s forty- four provincial capitals
and seventy district capitals, capturing the city of Hue,
seizing large portions of Saigon, and even managing
briefly to seize portions of the American embassy in
downtown Saigon.

Postmortem on Tet

After a month of unrelenting seesaw fighting, the Tet
Offensive finally concluded by the end of February 1968.
From a purely militarystandpoint, the Tet Offensive
turned out to be a clear-cut victory for the United States.
The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong lost an estimated
thirty thousand troops in the battle. The enemy forces in
South Vietnam were badly battered, with SIGINT picking
up signs of demoralization in the ranks of the North
Vietnamese Army. According to General Daniel Graham,
then an intelligence officer in Saigon, “We could read the
communications along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and it was
perfectly obvious that they were having one terrible time
because people from South Vietnam were going to go
back up that trail come hell or high water. All discipline
had broken down and they were going back up the trail.
Even some of the people who were operating the radio
stations along the trail had bugged out.”—

But while Tet may have been a military victory, it

produced a political firestorm back in the United States. It
shattered American political resolve and devastated the
Johnson administration. From a political standpoint, Tet
was an unequivocal strategic victory for North Vietnam
and the turning point in the Vietnam War — the defining
moment when the U.S. government and the American
populace finally decided that they could not win the
bloody conflict in Southeast Asia and that it was time to
leave. On March 31, 1968, only two months after the
beginning of the Tet Offensive, Lyndon Johnson went on
national television and told his fellow countrymen that he
had decided not to run for reelection. This signaled the
beginning of the end of America’s involvement in the
Vietnam War.

Not surprisingly, the postmortem reviews of the U.S.
intelligence community’s performance prior to the Tet
Offensive praised NS A. A CIA study states
unequivocally, “The National Security Agency stood
alone in issuing the kinds of warnings the U.S.
Intelligence Community was designed to provide.”— A
declassified Top Secret Codeword report submitted to the
President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board notes.

Despite enemy security measures, communications
intelligence was able to provide clear warning that
attacks, probably on a larger scale than ever before,
were in the offing . . . These messages, taken with
such nontextual indicators as increased message

volumes and radio direction-finding, served both to
validate information from other sources in the hand
of local authorities and to provide warning to senior
officials. The indicators, however, were not
sufficient to predict the exact timing of the attack.—

But recently declassified material reveals that prior to
the launch of the Tet Offensive, NS A only had definitive
information that indicated imminent North Vietnamese
and/or Viet Cong attacks in eight South Vietnamese
provinces, all in the northern part of the country or in the
Central Highlands. The provinces around Saigon and the
Mekong Delta were never mentioned in any of the NS A
reports. Except for the January 25 message detailed
above, the NS A intelligence reporting provided no
indication of the enemy’s intent to undertake a major
nationwide offensive, including attacks on virtually every
major South Vietnamese city, including Saigon itself. It
was not until years later that NS A admitted, “SIGINT was
unable to provide advance warning of the true nature,
size, and targets of the coming offensive.”—

And last (but not least), despite the fact that NS A was
the only U.S. intelligence agency to issue a^ywaming that
the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong intended to launch a
major offensive in South Vietnam, NSA’s official history
of the Vietnam War sadly notes that “the [NS A] reports
failed to shake the commands in Washington and Saigon
from their perception of the communist main threat

centered in the north, especially at Khe Sanh, and in the
Central Highlands.”—

The Battle of Khe Sanh

As vicious as the fighting would often be, the battle for
Khe Sanh was not the decisive event that Johnson and
Westmoreland had anticipated — or the American
equivalent of the 1954 Battle of Dien Bien Phu (where the
French army lost an entire garrison to the Viet Minh) that
the White House was so anxious to avert.

As noted above, the Battle of Khe Sanh had commenced
a week before the beginning of the Tet Offensive when
the North Vietnamese 325C Division launched an
unsuccessful three-battalion assault on marine defensive
positions in the hills outside the firebase. Then for the
next three weeks there was a surprising hiatus while the
Communist Tet Offensive raged over the rest of South
Vietnam. Newly declassified documents suggest that
SIGINT played a major role in this delay. On the
weekend before the Tet Offensive began, army and air
force ARDF aircraft pinpointed the location just inside
Laos of the NVA “Fronf’ headquarters directing
operations in the Khe Sanh area. On January 29, the day
before the Tet Offensive began, forty- five B-52 bombers
dumped 1,350 tons of bombs on the site of the North
Vietnamese headquarters, and the radio transmissions that
had been originating from the site disappeared for almost

two weeks, indicating that the bombers had destroyed the
enemy headquarters. —

It took the North Vietnamese several weeks to get
reorganized. On February 7, NVA troops and tanks
overran the nearby Green Beret base at Lang Vei. But
rather than presage a massive assault on Khe Sanh, the
attack on Lang Vei marked the beginning of almost three
months of desultory North Vietnamese attacks on the
firebase, which finally petered out in April. During this
three-month period, the marines beat off repeated small-
scale North Vietnamese ground assaults, in many cases,
only after fierce hand-to-hand fighting, but no major
attack on the firebase itself ever occurred. In fact, after the
fall of Lang Vei evidence appearing in SIGINT indicated
that the North Vietnamese had stripped troops from the
front lines around Khe Sanh and sent them south. As a
result. President Johnson and General Westmoreland’s
fears that Khe Sanh would become the “American Dien
Bien Phu” never materialized. The embarrassment felt by
U.S. government and military officials in Washington and
Saigon was palpable. The decisive battle with the best
units in the NVA that they had hoped for never happened.

According to a declassified NS A history, the Battle of
Khe Sanh was “one of the greatest SIGINT success
stories ever.” Much of the success can be credited to a
tiny U.S. Marine Corps SIGINT detachment belonging to
the First Radio Battalion and an attached South
Vietnamese SIGINT unit, which had been operating a

radio intercept site inside Khe Sanh since August 1967.
Once the NVA attacks against Khe Sanh began, the
marines started intercepting North Vietnamese artillery
communications, which allowed the unit to warn the
marine commander of the base every time the NVA
planned to bombard the base. The marine SIGINTers also
became expert in predicting when the North Vietnamese
planned to attack the base. A declassified NS A document
notes, “SIGINT predicted some 90 percent of all ground
assaults during the siege.”—

Throughout the battle, one or more army or air force
ARDF aircraft continually orbited over Khe Sanh,
pinpointing the sites of NVA radio transmissions,
enabling the marines to direct air strikes and artillery fire
toward the North Vietnamese commanders as they spoke
on the radio. The process of locating NVA radio
transmitters became so smooth that within ten minutes of
a North Vietnamese radio operator going on the air, his
location was being plastered by artillery fire or tons of
bombs dropped by orbiting fighter-bombers.—

The casualties that the North Vietnamese suffered
thanks to SIGINT were considerable. Daniel Graham,
then a colonel serving on the MACV intelligence staff in
Saigon, said, “We knew . . . from intelligence that we had
got our direction-finding equipment going so well up
around Khe Sanh that whenever they’d hit the [Morse]
key for a minute, boom, they’d get hit. We’d get gripes;
here were [North Vietnamese] commanders on their

telephones, saying, ‘I need a radio operator. My people
won’t man the radios.’ Every time they’d open up with a
radio, boom! There comes shot and shell . . . Oh hell, you
know, you got to the point where you kind of
sympathized with these poor bastards out there under that
kind of shot and shell.”—

The Invasion of Cambodia

By early 1970 the Nixon administration was secretly
planning to expand the war into neighboring Cambodia.
In February, President Richard Nixon authorized a
massive secret bombing campaign against North
Vietnamese base camps and supply depots there. On
March 18, Cambodian leader Prince Norodom Sihanouk
was overthrown in a coup d’etat led by the Cambodian
defense minister. General Lon Nol.—

On April 30, Nixon ordered U.S. troops to cross into
Cambodia and wipe out the vast network of North
Vietnamese military headquarter complexes and base
camps inside the country. Demonstrations immediately
erupted across America, which led to the tragic encounter
between Ohio Army National Guard troops and student
protesters at Kent State University, which left four
students dead.

So secret were the administration’s plans that neither
NS A nor the military SIGINT units in Vietnam were
sufficiently forewarned. Lieutenant Colonel James Freeze,

the commander of the ASA’s 303rd Radio Research
Battalion at Long Binh, did not find out about the
invasion until April 28, two days before it was due to
begin. There was not a lot that NS A and the military
SIGINT units in Vietnam could do in forty-eight hours to
prepare for the invasion.—

One of the main objectives of the invasion was to
capture or destroy the headquarters of all North
Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces fighting in South
Vietnam, which was known as the Central Office, South
Vietnam (COSVN). SIGINT collected prior to the
invasion showed that the COSVN headquarters complex
was located somewhere just inside Cambodia opposite
Tay Ninh Province in South Vietnam. Throughout the
incursion, U.S. Army and Air Force ARDF aircraft were
able to track the movements of COSVN by listening to its
radio transmissions as it retreated deeper into Cambodia,
always well ahead of the slow-moving U.S. and South
Vietnamese forces, which, SIGINT showed, never came
close to capturing the headquarters.—

The invasion of Cambodia prompted the North
Vietnamese to expand their control over eastern
Cambodia. By the end of May 1970, all U.S. and South
Vietnamese forces had retreated back across the border
into South Vietnam, and the North Vietnamese military
was left with complete control over all of northeastern
Cambodia. As an NS A historian put it, “few operations in
American military history had such dismal

consequences.”—

This Is the End

On January 27, 1973, Secretary of State William Rogers
and his North Vietnamese counterpart, Le Due Tho,
signed the Paris Peace Agreement, and the last remaining
U.S. forces were withdrawn from South Vietnam two
months later, including the last remaining U.S. military
SIGINT collection units. After the U.S. troop withdrawal
was completed, in late 1973, the only remaining NSA
presence in the country was the agency’s liaison staff in
Saigon, as well as several hundred U.S. Army advisers
who were engaged in trying to train and equip the South
Vietnamese SIGINT service.—

Things remained relatively peaceful until the fall of
1974, when SIGINT reporting coming out of NSA began
indicating that the North Vietnamese were openly
building up the strength of their military forces inside
South Vietnam. SIGINT clearly showed that huge
numbers of North Vietnamese troops and supplies,
including tanks and armored vehicles, were flowing down
the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and they were no longer being
hindered by American air strikes. By January 1975,
SIGINT showed that the North Vietnamese military
buildup in South Vietnam had been completed. Everyone
in Washington knew that the “final offensive” was
coming soon.—

The collapse of South Vietnam began with the North
Vietnamese conducting a probing attack in January 1975
in Phuoc Long Province, in southern South Vietnam.
After a short fight, the province swiftly fell, a preview of
what was to come. Despite all SIGINT indications of a
continued North Vietnamese military buildup throughout
the south, on February 5 the CIA’s intelligence analysts
made this prediction: “While we expect localized heavy
fighting to resume soon, there are no indications of
Communist plans for an all-out offensive in the near
future.” On February 18, the CIA predicted, “heavy North
Vietnamese attacks” by the end of the month, with the
expected focus of the new offensive to be Tay Ninh City,
north of Saigon.—

The CIA analysts could not have been more wrong. In
March, the all-out North Vietnamese offensive
commenced, not around Tay Ninh but across northern
South Vietnam and the Central Highlands. NS A and
South Vietnamese SIGINT somehow failed to detect the
presence of at least three North Vietnamese divisions in
the Central Highlands until the attacks began. City after
city fell in rapid succession, and by the end of March the
entire Central Highlands had been abandoned to the North
Vietnamese. The NS A representative at the South
Vietnamese SIGINT intercept center in Pleiku barely
managed to get out of the city before it fell. As North
Vietnamese forces streamed south virtually unopposed,
the old imperial capital of Hue fell on March 22. In mid-

March, SIGINT had detected a number of North
Vietnamese strategic reserve divisions being hastily
moved into South Vietnam for the final push.—

As the North Vietnamese forces pushed southward
toward the city of Da Nang, on March 26 NS A ordered
the sole agency officer assigned to the South Vietnamese
listening post in the city to get out immediately. The NS A
officer drove to the Da Nang airport and managed to talk
his way on board one of the last Boeing 727 aircraft to get
out of the city. An NS A history notes, “He rode the
overloaded airplane to Saigon with a Vietnamese child on
his lap.” Da Nang fell to the North Vietnamese four days
later.—

As the North Vietnamese brought up reinforcements
and supplies for the final push to take Saigon, a few
hundred miles to the west the forces of the Cambodian
government were rapidly collapsing. Since the U.S.
invasion of Cam bo-dia in April 1970, the North
Vietnamese-backed Khmer Rouge forces had me
thodically captured most of the country from President
Lon NoTs poorly led government forces. By January
1975, Lon Nol’s troops held only a tiny island of territory
surrounding the capital of Phnom Penh, and SIGINT
reporting coming out of NS A and from U.S. military units
based in neighboring Thailand showed that the Khmer
Rouge were inching closer to the besieged capital. On
April 11, a U.S. Air Force SIGINT unit in Thailand
intercepted a message from the Khmer Rouge high

command ordering the final assault on Phnom Penh.
Ambassador John Gunther Dean was immediately ordered
to evacuate all employees of the U.S. embassy and any
other Americans remaining in Cambodia. U.S. military
helicopters had completed the evacuation by the end of
the day on April 12. The city fell to the Khmer Rouge the
next day.—

In Saigon, Ambassador Graham Martin refused to
believe the SIGINT reporting that detailed the massive
North Vietnamese military buildup taking place all around
the city. He steadfastly disregarded the portents, even
after the South Vietnamese president, Nguyen Van Thieu,
and most of his ministers resigned and fled the country.
An NS A history notes that Martin “believed that the
SIGINT was NVA deception” and repeatedly refused to
allow NSA’s station chief, Tom Glenn, to evacuate his
forty-three-man staff and their twenty-two dependents
from Saigon. Glenn also wanted to evacuate as many of
the South Vietnamese SIGINT staff as possible, as they
had worked side by side with NS A for so many years, but
this request was also refused. NS A director Lieutenant
General Lew Allen Jr., who had taken over the position in
August 1973, pleaded with CIA director William Colby
for permission to evacuate the NS A station from Saigon,
but even this plea was to no avail because Martin did not
want to show any sign that the U.S. government thought
Saigon would fall. So Glenn disobeyed Martin’s direct
order and surreptitiously put most of his staff and all of

their dependents onto jammed commercial airlines
leaving Saigon. There was nothing he could do for the
hundreds of South Vietnamese officers and staff members
who remained at their posts in Saigon listening to the
North Vietnamese close in on the capital.—

By April 24, 1975, even the CIA admitted the end was
near. Colby delivered the bad news to President Gerald
Ford, telling him that “the fate of the Republic of Vietnam
is sealed, and Saigon faces imminent military collapse.”—
Even when enemy troops and tanks overran the major
South Vietnamese military base at Bien Hoa, outside
Saigon, on April 26, Martin still refused to accept that
Saigon was doomed. On April 28, Glenn met with the
ambassador carrying a message from Allen ordering
Glenn to pack up his equipment and evacuate his
remaining staff immediately. Martin refused to allow this.
The following morning, the military airfield at Tan Son
Nhut fell, cutting off the last air link to the outside.

A massive evacuation operation to remove the last
Americans and their South Vietnamese allies from Saigon
began on April 29. Navy helicopters from the aircraft
carrier USS Hancock, cruising offshore, began shuttling
back and forth, carrying seven thousand Americans and
South Vietnamese to safety. U.S. Air Force U-2 and RC-
135 reconnaissance aircraft were orbiting off the coast
monitoring North Vietnamese radio traffic to detect any
threat to the evacuation. In the confusion, Glenn
discovered that no one had made any arrangements to

evacuate his remaining staff, so the U.S. military attache
arranged for cars to pick up Glenn and his people at their
compound outside Saigon and transport them to the
embassy. That night, Glenn and his colleagues boarded a
U.S. Navy helicopter for the short ride to one of the navy
ships off the coast.—

But the thousands of South Vietnamese SIGINT officers
and intercept operators, including their chief. General
Pham Van Nhon, never got out. The North Vietnamese
captured the entire twenty- seven-hundred-man
organization intact as well as all their equipment. An NS A
history notes, “Many of the South Vietnamese SIGINTers
undoubtedly perished; others wound up in reeducation
camps. In later years a few began trickling into the United
States under the orderly departure program. Their story is
yet untold.” By any measure, it was an inglorious end to
NSA’s fifteen-year involvement in the Vietnam War, one
that still haunts agency veterans to this day.—

CHAPTER 8

Riding the Whirlwind
NS A During the Johnson Administration:

1963-1969

Sic gorgiamus alios subjectatos nunc (We gladly
feast on those who would subdue us).

^MORTICIA ADD AMS, THE ADD AMS FAMILY

The State of the SIGINT Nation

Between 1961 and 1969, NS A grew from 59,000 military
and civilian personnel, with a budget of $654 million, to a
staggering 93,067 men and women, 19,300 of whom
worked at NS A headquarters at Fort Meade, in Maryland.
The agency’s budget stood at over $1 billion.-
As it quickly became larger than all the other U.S.
intelligence agencies combined, it was developing and
deploying cutting-edge technology that radically
transformed how it collected and produced intelligence.
Beginning in 1960, NSA’s highly classified Boresight

project employed special equipment at Naval Security
Group high-frequency direction-finding (HFDF) listening
posts that could locate the source of the burst
transmissions of Soviet submarines in the Atlantic and the
Pacific.- Later in the 1960s, a new worldwide ocean
surveillance SIGINT system was brought online called
Classic Bullseye. An automated, larger, faster, and more
capable HFDF system than previous manual versions.
Classic Bullseye merged and modernized the naval
SIGINT intercept and HFDF resources of all five UKUSA
member nations. It enabled the United States and its
SIGINT partners to track in near real time the movements
and activities of Soviet warships and submarines around
the world. By the early 1970s, the Naval Security Group
Command was operating twenty-one Classic Bullseye
stations around the world, which were integrated with
eight stations operated by NSA’s UKUSA partners. -
NS A also fitted out seven spy ships under the rather
transparent cover description of “Technical Research
Ships.” In June 1956, NS A director General Ralph Canine
had recommended putting NS A intercept gear on U.S.
Navy ships as a rapid-reaction force to cover
contingencies in parts of the world where NS A did not
have listening posts. Under pressure from the CIA in the
late 1950s, NS A increased its SIGINT coverage of areas it
had long neglected, particularly Latin America and
Africa, where events commanded greater U.S. intelligence
attention following the granting of independence to

former colonies by Eu ro pean nations. Small but bloody
guerrilla wars, many communist-backed, broke out
throughout Latin America, Africa, and Asia. To monitor
all these developments, NS A built its own fleet of spy
ships — ^patterned after the Russian spy trawlers that had
lurked off American territorial waters since the early
1950s — which were to be manned by U.S. Navy officers
and crews but used exclusively for NSA.-
With the launch of the first “ferret” electronic
intelligence satellites by the National Reconnaissance
Office (NRO) in the early 1960s, NSA also played an
increasingly important role in space, its ELINT collection
exponentially expanding what the U.S. intelligence
community knew about the Soviet Union. Between 1963
and 1967, American ferret satellites mapped the locations
and ascertained the capabilities of virtually every Soviet
radar site in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, as well
as all Chinese, North Korean, and North Vietnamese radar
systems. By 1967, the ELINT database had enabled the
CIA to issue its first truly comprehensive National
Intelligence Estimate on the state of Soviet air defenses,
an assessment based almost entirely on SIGINT.-
Beginning in 1966, the U.S. intelligence community
became alarmed about the nascent Soviet antiballistic
missile (ABM) system that was then being constructed
around Moscow. Given a November 17, 1966, U.S.
Intelligence Board mandate, CIA director Richard Helms
ordered his agency to develop — in a year or less — a new

ELINT satellite to collect intelligence about Soviet ABM
work. It was developed, produced, and launched by the
NRO, and the first of the new ABM-intercept satellites
went into orbit in early 1968. Colonel John Copley, head
of the NS A division processing the satellite intercepts,
later recounted, “By 1968 data from these payloads and
the follow-on systems had identified early ABM-
associated radars, greatly reducing the uncertainty
associated with the Soviet strategic threat.”-
To exploit the cornucopia of intercepted SIGINT data,
NSA’s basement computer complex expanded

dramatically in the 1960s, particularly with the advent of
IBM’s development in the late 1950s of a revolutionary
new data processor called Stretch, which was one hundred
times more powerful than any other existing computer
system. NSA’s deputy director, Louis Tordella,

immediately ordered the computer. The first one,
christened Harvest by NS A, was delivered in early 1962.
With the capacity to read three million characters per
minute. Harvest could do in minutes what older
computers had taken weeks to accomplish. For example,
in 1968 Harvest took only three hours and fifty minutes to
scan seven million intercepts to see if they contained any
of seven thousand words and phrases on a watch list,
which equated to over thirty thousand intercepts scanned
per minute. This huge computer system, the agency’s
workhorse for the next fifteen years, is generally credited
with helping NS A stay competitive in the code-breaking

game throughout the 1960s and was reportedly
instrumental in helping NS A solve a number of important
Soviet cipher systems during the 1970s.-
By 1968, NSA’s inventory of computers dwarfed the
computing power of the rest of the U.S. government
combined, with the exception of the somewhat smaller
computer complex used by the nuclear weapons designers
of the Atomic Energy Commission. NSA’s director.
General Marshall Carter, boasted, “NS A had over 100
computers occupying almost 5 acres of floorspace.”-

/ Get the Sense You Are Disappointed

But despite all of the new technology at NSA’s command,
it was becoming increasingly difficult to produce against
its primary targets. To NSA’s frustration, a new
generation of computerized cipher machines were being
introduced around the world, which taxed the ability of
NSA’s cryptanalysts to the limit, making it even more
difficult for NS A to produce meaningful intelligence. As
this increasingly worrisome decline continued, senior
U.S. intelligence officials began to question whether
SIGINT was worth all of the time, effort, and money
allotted to it. The greatest problem was that twenty years
after the end of World War II, NS A still could not read
high-level enciphered Russian traffic. By 1965, there was
a widespread belief within the U.S. intelligence
community that the decline in NSA’s intelligence

production had reached worrisome proportions, with a
declassified CIA memo admitting that “SIGINT, striving
for breakthroughs, is struggling against the growing
security barriers that increasingly prevent readout of
wanted information from signals.

A special unit called A5 was created in 1961 to mount
an all-out assault on Soviet codes, headed by one of
NSA’s best cryptanalysts, William Lutwiniak, who in his
spare time was also the editor of the Washington
Po^/^crossword puzzle. He had been hired by the
legendary William Friedman in February 1941 and
worked on Japanese codes during the war. After that, he
turned his attention to Russian ciphers, including some
groundbreaking work on the solution of the Venona
material. He would head A5 for the next twelve years.
Unfortunately, he came in at a time when the hugely
expensive cryptanalytic effort against Russian high-level
ciphers remained stalled, with only one Soviet high-grade
cipher machine system then being partially readable.
According to a confidential source, the two Russian
cipher machine systems that NS A was partially exploiting
at the time — Silver and Mercury — ^yielded a trickle of
intelligence rather than a flood.

Concerned about the declining value of NSA’s
cryptanalytic product, and in particular the agency’s lack
of progress against Soviet cipher systems, in 1965 the
CIA asked the former chief of the agency’s Clandestine
Service, Richard “Dick” Bissell, to take a long, hard look

at NSA’s cryptanalytic efforts. Working largely by
himself, Dick Bissell examined the long-term prospects
for success against Soviet cipher systems. Bissell
concluded that there should be no reduction in NSA’s
overall cryptanalytic effort, but recommended that many
of the NS A personnel then working on Soviet systems
might be better employed working on the ciphers of
“softer” non-Soviet targets.—

This meant that NSA’s most productive sources during
the 1960s remained low-level signals sources that still had
to be harvested and analyzed en masse in order to derive
even a modicum of useful intelligence. For example, NS A
was able to locate a few Soviet ICBM launch sites and
missile test and production facilities by carefully
monitoring the flight activity of special transport aircraft
belonging to a number of special Soviet air force transport
units based in and around Moscow whose function was to
transport senior military officials and scientists and
engineers involved in the missile program throughout the
country.— In a similar vein, virtually all of the
intelligence that NSA was producing in the 1950s and
early 1960s concerning Soviet nuclear weapons testing
activities was based almost entirely on intercepts of low-
level radio traffic relating to special transport aircraft
flight activity and weather reporting relating to Russian
nuclear weapons tests, as well as exploiting the
unencrypted communications traffic of the Soviet nuclear

test detection system.—

But declassified documents show that it was becoming
increasingly difficult for NS A to get at these low-level
targets because beginning in the early 1960s, the Russians
moved important chunks of their telephone and telegraph
traffic to new telecommunications systems which the
agency could not intercept, such as buried coaxial cable
links and micro wave radio-relay systems. According to
former senior CIA official Albert Wheelon, by 1963
“communications intelligence against the USSR was
helpful but eroding as the Soviets moved their traffic to
landlines and microwave links.” This meant that NSA’s
collection specialists spent the entire decade of the 1960s
trying as best they could to “reestablish COMINT access
to Soviet and Chinese communications traffic.”—

Pat ’s House

In April 1965, Lieutenant General Gordon Blake retired
and was replaced as NSA’s director by his 1931 West
Point classmate Lieutenant General Marshall “Paf ’ Carter,
who was to become one of the most important men ever
to head the agency, for better and for worse.

Carter served in a variety of antiaircraft artillery
postings in the United States, Hawaii, and Panama before
the army recognized his considerable intellect and sent
him to study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
from which he graduated in 1936. From 1946 to 1947, he

was the executive assistant to General George Marshall
when the latter served as Truman’s special envoy to
China. To everyone’s surprise, the taciturn Marshall and
the jovial bon vivant Carter got along so well that when
Marshall was named secretary of state in January 1947, he
asked the Pentagon if he could keep Carter on as his
assistant. After graduating from the National War College
in June 1950, Carter moved over to the Pentagon to return
to his old job as executive assistant to Marshall, who was
now the secretary of defense. From that point onward.
Carter served in a number of significant command
positions. In March 1962, President Kennedy named him
the deputy director of the CIA despite the fact that he had
no prior intelligence experience. The job came with a
promotion to the rank of lieutenant general. At the CIA,
he was intimately involved in Operation Mongoose, the
Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Gulf of Tonkin incidents,
which brought him into close contact with Presidents
Kennedy and Johnson and their cabinet members on a
daily basis. Carter remained at the CIA until he was
named director of NS A.—

Bald and pudgy, and not particularly imposing. Carter
was bright, shrewd, and an extremely capable
administrator, which, coupled with his lengthy exposure
to high-level policy making in Washington, made him
formidable. He also had a wicked sense of humor that was
infamous throughout Washington.

When the aloof CIA director John McCone sealed up

the connecting door to Carter’s adjacent office at the
agency’s Langley, Virginia, headquarters in the dead of
night. Carter affixed a fake hand to the wall where the
door used to be, a less than subtle way of making fun of
McCone’s action, but also leaving Carter’s visitors to
wonder if McCone was trying to get out of his office.
When McCone asked that perfumes and special toilet
paper be placed in his private bathroom at Langley to
accommodate the needs of his new wife. Carter responded
by installing a container in his private bathroom to hold,
among other things, a selection of corncob pipes and a
well-worn copy of the Sears catalog.—

Despite the fact that he had never before commanded
anything as large or complex as NS A, in a matter of
months Carter began transforming the agency to fit his
own personal vision, and he launched an intensive
lobbying campaign to promote NS A within the U.S.
intelligence community. This instantly brought him into
conflict with senior officials at the CIA, who were
inherently fearful of NSA’s growing power within the
community, and with Secretary of Defense Robert
McNamara’s Pentagon, which wanted a docile agency
that would do as it was told. Rather than bend or
compromise. Carter, as a declassified NS A history puts it,
“fell on a startled national defense community like a
bobcat on the back of a moose.”—

The years 1965 through 1969 were marked by a never-
ending series of brawls that pitted Carter and NS A against

virtually everybody else in official Washington. In short
order, the director managed to alienate McNamara, the
entire Joint Chiefs of Staff, and most of the other senior
military commanders, which “poisoned the atmosphere
and led to a confrontational relationship between NS A
and the military it was sworn to support.” To many of his
subordinates, it seemed as if Carter was deliberately
picking fights with anyone who stood in his way.—

If anything, NSA’s relationship with the U.S.
intelligence community was worse. As the agency’s
influence inside the Johnson White House increased, so
too did fear and resentment within the intelligence
community. In a series of running battles, the CIA
charged that NS A was producing finished intelligence in
violation of NSC guidelines; that NSA deliberately sat on
intelligence that the CIA needed so that it could look good
with the White House; that the analysts at Fort Meade
were not getting material to the intelligence community
fast enough; and that NSA was flouting the authority of
the director of central intelligence to manage the entire
U.S. intelligence community.—

The Six-Day War and the Attack on the

USS Liberty

Well before the start of the June 1967 Arab-Israeli War,
NSA listening posts around the Middle East detected a
substantial increase in Egyptian, Syrian, Jordanian, and

Israeli military activity along the first three countries’
borders with Israel, including troop and equipment
concentrations, intensified military exercises, and
increased Israeli reconnaissance overflights of the other
countries. The Naval Security Group (NSG) listening post
in Morocco also picked up clear indications of impending
hostilities from its intercepts of Egyptian military radio
traffic.—

On April 7, 1967, a border clash between Israeli and
Syrian troops in the Golan Heights escalated into a
pitched battle, with the Israeli air force conducting dozens
of air strikes on Syrian military positions deep inside
Syria. This prompted NS A to declare a SIGINT
Readiness Alfa alert for all Middle East targets. The alert
was terminated three days later after the fighting ceased.—

But the situation in the region continued to deteriorate.
On April 22, NS A intercepted radio traffic revealed that
Egyptian TU-16 Badger bombers were dropping mustard
gas bombs on Yemeni royalist positions in North Yemen.
Between May 11 and May 14, the bombers struck a
number of towns in southern Saudi Arabia, prompting
NS A to increase its SIGINT coverage of Egyp-tian
military activity in Yemen because of the threat it posed
to America’s ally in the region, Saudi Arabia.—

More ominously, NS A intercepted and decrypted a
message sent on May 13 by the Egyptian ambassador in
Moscow to Cairo that, according to a CIA report, stated

“Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Semenov had told the
Egyptians that Israel was preparing a ground and air
attack on Syria — to be carried out between 17 and 21
May. It stated that the Soviets had advised the UAR
[United Arab Republic] to be prepared, to stay calm, and
not to be drawn into fighting with Israel.” The Russian
warning was totally wrong, but it gave Egyptian president
Gamal Abdel Nasser an excuse to ratchet up the tension
level, with a CIA report dryly noting, “The Arabs were to
take the information but not the advice.” — The next day,
radio intercepts arriving at NS A confirmed that the
Egyptians had just placed their entire air defense force on
alert and sortied a number of warships out to sea. With
this move, NS A extended its SIGINT alert to all Middle
Eastern targets.—

Nasser’s intentions were clearly indicated by his
demand, on May 19, for the removal of all U.N.
peacekeeping forces in the Sinai Peninsula, which had
been in place since the end of the 1956 Arab-Israeli War.
After the United Nations withdrew, fifty thousand
Egyptian troops along with five hundred tanks streamed
across the Suez Canal. SIGINT reporting from the U.S.
Air Force listening post at Iraklion, on the island of Crete,
showed that the majority of the Egyptian armored and
infantry units in the Sinai were now deployed from east to
west between the city of Khan Yunis, in the Gaza Strip,
and the town of El-Arish, on the north coast of the

Sinai.— On May 22, Egyptian naval forces imposed a
blockade on the Strait of Tiran and closed the Gulf of
Aqaba to Israeli shipping, prompting the full-scale
mobilization of the Israeli Defense Forces. NS A SIGINT
revealed that an Egyptian coastal artillery unit had taken
up positions at Sharm al-Sheikh, at the mouth of the Gulf
of Aqaba, and that Egyptian torpedo boats were now
patrolling the Strait of Tiran, giving the Egyptians the
means to attack any ship attempting to sail to the Israeli
port of Eilat. The following day, the CIA’s Office of
Current Intelligence (OCI) formed a Middle East task
force in order to monitor the increasingly tense situation
in the region, and on May 23, NS A raised its alert status
to SIGINT Readiness Bravo Crayon for all Middle East
targets, its highest non-wartime alert readiness level.— All
NSA-controlled listening posts capable of Middle East
intercepts were ordered to intensify coverage of military
targets in the region, especially the U.S. Army’s huge
listening post outside Asmara, Ethiopia, known as Kag-
new Station; the U.S. Air Force intercept station at
Iraklion; and the U.S. Navy listening posts at Yerolakkos
on Cyprus, Sidi Yahia in Morocco, and Rota, Spain. NS A
also had a few small clandestine listening posts hidden
inside U.S. embassies in places like Beirut, which were
operated by ASA through an intensely secretive 337-man
unit whose oblique cover name was the U.S. Army
Communications Support Unit. NS A feared that in the
event of war, Egypt and its Arab allies would break

diplomatic relations and force the closure of the
embassies, shutting down those listening posts.
Accordingly, on May 23, NS A ordered the U.S. Navy
SIGINT ship USS Libertyto sail for the eastern
Mediterranean at top speed.—

Until its arrival, only a few U.S. Air Force and Navy
reconnaissance aircraft equipped for SIGINT collection,
based outside Athens, were available for close-up
monitoring of the situation, so they were given daily
missions off the coast of the Sinai to collect increased
intercepts of very high frequency (VHF) and ultrahigh
frequency (UHF) Arab and Israeli military radio traffic.
These missions yielded full confirmation that Arab and
Israeli military forces were on a state of high alert.—
During the first weeks of June, radio intercepts revealed
that Egyptian antiaircraft batteries deployed around
Sharm al-Sheikh had opened fire on Israeli Mirage
fighters patrolling the area. COMINT also showed that
Egyptian air force aircraft were conducting aerial
reconnaissance missions along the border with Israel, and
that Egyptian navy torpedo boats had intensified their
patrolling activities in the Strait of Than.— By June 3,
COMINT revealed that Egyptian transport aircraft had
flown several elite commando battalions to Jordan.—
Intercepts by NSA and Great Britain’s GCHQ of French
diplomatic communications confirmed these and other
developments at a time when the United States did not

have diplomatic relations with Egypt (hence no firsthand
intelligence reporting). The French ambassadors in Cairo
and Tel Aviv were trying to broker a peaceful settlement
between Egypt and Israel over the Sinai before it erupted
in war. NS A was also intercepting and reading Soviet
diplomatic radio traffic between Moscow and its military
representatives in Cairo, which indicated that the Soviets
believed that war between Israel and Egypt was imminent.
In April, NS A issued a CRITIC warning after COMINT
detected Russian military preparations for this
eventuality.—

On Sunday morning, June 4, NS A decoded an intercept
(whether from French or Israeli communications is still
unknown), which revealed that the Israelis intended to
attack Egypt within twenty-four hours. One of the very
few U.S. government officials cleared for access to this
material was a State Department intelligence analyst
named Philip Merrill, who was the duty officer in the
State Department INR unit that handled SIGINT. Merrill
later recalled, “I checked this one morning and a certain
word we were looking for, let’s just call it Geronimo,
came in at 5:00 a.m. This was the jump-off word [ for the
Israeli attack] and there was some limited associated
material with it.” Merrill raced upstairs to Secretary of
State Dean Rusk’s office, but Rusk was closeted in a
meeting on the crisis with Secretary of Defense
McNamara, National Security Advisor Walt Rostow, and
others. Of those attending, only Rusk, McNamara, and

Rostow were cleared for access to the NS A material, so
Rusk’s executive secretary devised a pretext for getting
those not cleared out of the room so that Merrill could
pass on the message. Merrill found it all somewhat
amusing but says that it was “an indication for the record
of history, how tightly held much of this was.”—

Monday morning, June 5, started normally for the radio
intercept operators at the U.S. Army’s huge Kagnew
Station, in Ethiopia. At eight a.m. local time (two a.m.
Washington time), operators were waiting to be relieved
by the day shift when, a former army intercept supervisor
recalled years later, one of the night shift’s French
linguists announced that “some guy was screaming in
French and there were clearly bombs exploding in the
background. It turned out that the source of the
commotion was a French reporter at the Cairo airport,
who was yelling into a telephone describing the bombing
of the airport while Israeli bombs rained down around
him.” The 1967 Arab-Israeli War had just begun.—

The majority of the four hundred combat aircraft
belonging to the Israeli air force were busy destroying
virtually all of the Egyptian air force’s airfields. A smaller
number of Israeli fighter-bombers were at the same time
attacking key military airfields in Jordan, Syria, and
western Iraq. As a declassified NS A history notes, “by
nightfall Israel had complete mastery of the sky having
virtually destroyed four Arab air forces.”—

Around three a.m. Eastern Standard Time (EST) NS A
placed all of its units in the Middle East on SIGINT
Readiness Alfa, and some of them intercepted the
following Egyptian radio message: “Cairo has just been
informed at least five of its airfields in Sinai and the Canal
area have suddenly become unserviceable.” Less than an
hour later, the NS A listening post at Iraklion intercepted a
Jordanian air force message indicating that a number of its
airfields were also being attacked by Israeli fighter-
bombers.—

National Security Advisor Walt Rostow, reading
forwarded raw transcripts of these intercepts in the White
House Situation Room (the first reached him shortly after
nine a.m.), phoned President Johnson with summaries as
soon as they came in. The SIGINT reporting convinced
Rostow and Johnson that the Israelis had just launched a
massive first strike against the opposing Arab air forces.
By midaftemoon, it was clear that the Israelis had almost
completely wiped out the Egyptian and Jordanian air
forces, leading Rostow to send a memo to Johnson later
that afternoon titled “The first day’s Turkey Shoot.”—

Chaos within the Egyptian military command structure,
as reflected in the COMINT intercepts, was so pervasive
that Egyptian military communications personnel stopped
enciphering their communications and talked in the clear,
giving an unexpected gift to American, British, and Israeli
radio intelligence personnel.— SIGINT during the war

also revealed that Iraq, which had promised to provide the
Syrians fighting the Israelis in the Golan Heights with a
full combat division, had in fact not moved any units
toward its border with Syria.—

Beginning on June 6, the day after the Israeli offensive
began, and continuing for the next three weeks, NS A
listening posts in Europe and the Middle East monitored
over 350 flights of Russian military transport aircraft from
the Soviet Union to Syria and Egypt carrying military
equipment and supplies.—

But the Russian shipments were all for naught. By the
end of June 7, virtually all the Egyptian army units in the
Sinai had been destroyed, and the survivors were fleeing
back to Egypt as fast as they could. Robert Wilson, an
Arabic linguist on the NS A spy ship the Liberty, which
had finally arrived off the north coast of the Sinai on June
7, recalled, “Once we got on station, the Egyptians were
dead, practically. There was no voice communications at
all that we could pick up, except for the Israelis.”
Unfortunately, as recently declassified NS A material
reveals, the Libertyhsid sailed without any Hebrew
linguists aboard, since NS A had not tasked it to intercept
Israeli communications before it sailed.—

SIGINT was able to show that the Egyptian general
staff was desperately trying to extricate what was left of
its decimated forces from the Sinai. By the end of June 8,
NS A analysts knew that the war was for all intents and

purposes over, having intercepted a message from the
commander of Israeli forces in the Sinai telling Tel Aviv
that his forces were “camping on the banks of the Suez
Canal and the Red Sea.”—

But that afternoon, Israeli fighter-bombers and motor
torpedo boats attacked the LibertydiS it sailed in
international waters off the north coast of the Sinai. The
attack killed 34 members of the ship’s crew, including 25
navy, marine, and NS A civilian cryptologists in its
research spaces, and wounded a further 171 crew
members. This incident represents the single worst loss of
SIGINT personnel in NSA’s history, something for
which, understandably, many former NS A personnel and
most crewmen who were on the Liber tyhdiYQ never
forgiven the Israelis. —

While the LibertywsiS unable to read the
communications in Hebrew of the attacking Israeli
warplanes and torpedo boats, a U.S. Navy EC-121M
SIGINT aircraft flying out of its base in Greece was able
to intercept the radio traffic between Israeli helicopter
pilots scouting the ship and their ground controller at
Hatzor Air Base, near Tel Aviv, shortly after the attacks
took place.— These intercepts confirmed that Israeli
forces had attacked the Liberty, and that the Israelis had
failed to identify it as an American ship before or during
the attack. One intercept caught the pilot of one of the
Israeli helicopters radioing that the attacked ship was

“definitely Egyptian.”—

Thirty years later, a raging controversy continues to
swirl around the Israeli attack on the Liberty. The Israeli
government admitted that its forces had attacked the ship,
but claimed that it had been an accident. Although the
U.S. government accepted the Israeli government’s
finding and reparation payment, this explanation was
rejected by most of the Liberty'^ surviving crew
members, who wonder how the Israeli fighter pilots and
torpedo boat captains who attacked the ship could not
have noticed the huge American flag flying from the
ship’s masthead. Former NS A officials and LibertycYQw
members have, more recently, alleged that NS A is
withholding from the public transcripts of intercepted
Israeli communications that allegedly show that the
Israelis knew they were attacking an American ship. But
current NS A officials deny this claim, although they
acknowledge that NS A continues to withhold from public
release a number of documents relating to the attack, for
reasons as yet unknown.

In the days after the attack on the Liberty, the Israeli
military captured the Golan Heights and threatened to
extend its advance toward the Syrian capital of Damascus.
But the Russians were not about to let Syria be humiliated
in the same way as its Egyptian ally. At eight forty-eight
a.m. on Saturday, June 10, the Washington-Moscow Hot
Line teletype machine in the White House Situation
Room printed out a message from Soviet premier Aleksey

Kosygin for President Johnson, one of the most ominous
ever transmitted via this communications link. It read, in
part, “A very crucial moment has now arrived which
forces us, if military actions are not stopped in the next
few hours, to adopt an independent decision. We are
ready to do this. However, these actions may bring us into
a clash, which will lead to a grave catastrophe ... We
propose to warn Israel that, if this is not fulfilled,
necessary actions will be taken, including military.” In
other words, if the Israeli military’s advance on Damascus
was not stopped immediately, the Soviets would intervene
militarily. Kosygin’s threat set off alarm bells all over
Washington. CIA director Richard Helms, who was in the
Cabinet Room at the White House when Kosygin’s
message was delivered, recalled, “The atmosphere was
tense. The conversation was conducted in the lowest
voices I have ever heard.” The entire U.S. intelligence
community was immediately placed on alert, with NSA’s
director of operations, Oliver Kirby, declaring a SIGINT
Readiness Bravo Crayon alert for all Soviet
communications targets.—

Shortly after Kosygin’s message, SIGINT revealed that
a number of Soviet airborne divisions and their associated
military transport aircraft had been placed on alert inside
the Soviet Union. SIGINT also confirmed that at least
some of Russia’s strategic nuclear forces had been placed
on alert. A month later, in July, SIGINT detected the
largest integrated exercise of Soviet strategic nuclear

forces ever witnessed by the U.S. intelligence community.
Not only were all units of the Soviet Strategic Rocket
Forces (SRF) tested in a series of high-level command
post and communications exercises, but the Russians
sortied an unusually high number of submarines from
their home bases and even sent a portion of Russia’s small
strategic bomber force to conduct simulated nuclear
strikes on American targets from their Arctic staging
bases. To put it mildly, the unannounced exercise caused
a fair amount of apprehension in Washington.—
Fortunately for all concerned, the Israeli army stopped
its advance into Syria, and the Israeli government
accepted an immediate U.N.-sponsored ceasefire. The war
officially came to an end at six thirty p.m. on June 10,
1967, and everyone in the U.S. intelligence community
breathed a deep sigh of relief.

The USS Pueblo

In February 1965, the commander of the U.S. Pacific
Fleet recommended to the chief of naval operations that
the navy acquire at least one dedicated spy ship of its own
to perform the kinds of SIGINT collection missions that
NSA’s Liberty-class spy ships were doing. The navy was
frustrated that NSA’s fleet of “Technical Research Ships”
such as the USS LibertywQYQ oriented exclusively toward
national SIGINT targets, making them next to useless for
gathering the kind of tactical intelligence on Soviet naval

activities that the navy wanted but that NS A tended to
ignore. So in 1965, the navy approved the conversion of
not one but three naval vessels into intelligence collection
ships, designated AGERs, which would collect
intelligence solely for navy commanders. NS A very
reluctantly agreed to allow this, because of fears that the
navy had far more ambitious objectives than the ones it
cited as grounds for carrying out its own sea-based
SIGINT operations.—

The navy selected three mothballed World War Il-era
cargo ships (AKs). The first was the USS Banner, a light
cargo ship (AKL-25), chosen in July 1965 because it was
“the least unsuitable hull that could be made immediately
available.” Seven weeks and $1.5 million later, the
conversion was complete. Eight SIGINT antennae were
bolted to the ship’s superstructure and masthead; below
the main deck just forward of the pilothouse, a SIGINT
operations center nicknamed the Sod Hut (where a
twenty- seven-man SIGINT detachment was to work) was
added. It was small and extremely cramped, measuring
only about thirty feet in length and eleven feet in width,
and was configured with five SIGINT intercept positions
and a separate communications position, which was less
than one quarter the number of intercept positions on
NSA’s much larger Liberty-class spy ships.—

As soon as the conversion was completed, the
Banner^diilQd to her new home port in Yokosuka, Japan,
without undertaking any sea trials; arriving in Japan on

October 17, she commenced her first operational patrol on
October 30. Over the next two years, the Banner^rovidQd
valuable SIGINT about Soviet, Chinese, and North
Korean fleet activities and antisubmarine warfare
techniques.—

In November 1965, the navy was authorized to modify
two more ships into AGER intelligence collection vessels.
These ships were the USS Pueblo and the USS Palm
Beach. On April 12, 1966, the Pueblo^di^ reactivated and
taken to the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, where it was
converted into an AGER between June 1966 and
September 1967 at a cost of $4.5 million. The
Pt/eZ?/odeparted Bremerton, Washington, in September,
and, after a brief shakedown cruise off San Diego, sailed
for Japan, arriving at the port of Yokosuka on December
E She sailed from the port of Sasebo, Japan, on her
maiden voyage on January 11, 1968, on what was
supposed to be a routine three-and-a-half-week
intelligence collection mission off the east coast of North
Korea.— Twelve days later, on January 23, the Pueblo^di^
attacked and seized by North Korean warships in
international waters twenty-five miles off the North
Korean port of Wonsan. One crewman, Duane Hodges,
was killed during the attack. —

Weeks before the Pi/eZ?/osailed, on December 23, 1967,
NS A had sent out a message to the U.S. intelligence
community warning about the possibility that the spy ship

might be attacked by an increasingly belligerent North
Korea and suggesting that “ship protective measures” —
i.e., air cover and/or a naval escort — be seriously
considered. But a congressional investigation after the
ship’s seizure found that the NSA message “never
reached responsible authorities” and observed that “the
incredible handling of the NSA warning message on the
Pt/eZ?/omission is hardly looked upon with pride by
responsible authorities in the Pentagon.” On January 2,
1968, nine days before the Pi/eZ?/osailed into history, the
CIA’s deputy director for intelligence wrote a memo to
CIA director Helms also warning that the North Koreans
“might choose to take some sort of action against these
ships.”—

Intercepts of North Korean naval radio traffic indicated
that the North Koreans were well aware of the Pueblo'^
presence off their coast at least twenty-four hours before
the attack, suggesting to American intelligence analysts
that the attack was premeditated.— NSG listening posts in
Japan intercepted radio transmissions from the North
Korean warships during the attack that showed that the
ship was in international waters when she was seized,
although intercepted North Korean radar tracking
transmissions reportedly indicated that she had violated
North Korean territorial waters.—

The damage to U.S. national security caused by the
capture of the Pt/eZ?/owas massive and, in most respects.

irreparable. An NS A history notes, “It was everyone’s
worst nightmare, surpassing in damage anything that had
ever happened to the cryptologic community.”—

The problem was that the U.S. government could not
admit this because, at the time, the Johnson administration
was still sticking to the cover story that the PweZ?/owas an
“oceanographic research ship” engaged in routine
scientific research. NS A and the rest of the U.S.
intelligence community initially believed that the ship’s
crew had managed to destroy all of the classified
documents and equipment on the ship before it was
boarded by the North Koreans. Then a few days later,
NS A was stunned when it received word that North
Korean state television had just broadcast photographs of
a large number of Top Secret Codeword documents that
had been captured on the Pueblo, including the titles of
the documents. A few months later, the North Koreans
published a book in French that included photographs and
the full text of many of the same NS A documents (some
of which the agency still holds to be classified),
demonstrating what the Pueblo'^ true mission was.—

Then, to make matters even worse, on January 27, 1968,
four days after the PueblowsiS seized, NS A intercepted the
radio transmissions of a Vladivostok-based Russian navy
AN- 12 military transport plane as it landed at the military
airfield serving the port of Wonsan. American intelligence
analysts were forced to assume the worst case — that
Russian experts had flown in and been allowed to

examine the Pueblo'^ SIGINT spaces and captured
documents. Shortly afterward, a U.S. Air Force listening
post in northern Japan, which was monitoring the
Pyongyang-to-Moscow facsimile link, detected that many
of the classified documents captured on the Pueblo^QVQ
being sent to Moscow.—

In the months that followed, several important SIGINT
sources that NS A had been successfully exploiting in the
Soviet Union and North Korea dried up without any
warning. The loss of these sources made the disaster
complete. A January 24 Top Secret Codeword cable from
the director of NS A admitted that the capture of the ship
was “a major intelligence coup without parallel in modern
history.” According to the report, the damage to U.S.
SIGINT collection operations was deemed to be “very
severe.”—

The White House, the Pentagon, senior U.S. military
officers, and even the CIA and NS A all concluded that the
mission had been not only dangerous but also
unnecessary. When asked by an army interviewer years
later whether the Pueblomi^^ion had been worth the risk,
the commander of U.S. military forces in Korea at the
time. General Charles Bonesteel III, said, “No . . . the
degree of risk was totally unnecessary. Now, I wanted
intelligence. I didn’t have any damned intelligence, real
intelligence that could provide early warnings against a
surprise attack from the North. But we didn’t need it in
superfluous COMINT. This was the intelligence tail

wagging the dog.”—

The Invasion of Czechoslovakia

SIGINT proved to be valuable and effective in covering
the Soviet military buildup for the invasion of
Czechoslovakia that began on August 20, 1968. The
purpose of the Soviet invasion was to topple the Czech
government headed by a progressive-minded Communist
Party official named Alexander Dub 9 ek. Immediately
upon being elected in April 1968, Dub 9 ek earned the ire
of Moscow by firing all of the hard-line Communists
from the Czech government, then instituting a series of
popular political and social reforms that caused even more
consternation in Moscow.

Within days of Dub 9 ek taking power, SIGINT detected
the movement of eight Soviet combat divisions from their
barracks in East Germany, Poland, and the western
military districts of the Soviet Union to points around the
periphery of Czechoslovakia. By the end of June, SIGINT
and satellite reconnaissance revealed that the Soviets now
had thirty-four combat divisions deployed along the
Czech border, and that the Soviets were rapidly moving
hundreds of combat aircraft to airfields within striking
distance of targets inside Czechoslovakia. On July 17,
SIGINT detected the first signs that the Soviet military
had begun mobilizing its forces in the western USSR for a
potential invasion of Czechoslovakia. Three days later

NS A reported that a newly activated high-level Soviet
headquarters was now operating inside the Soviet military
bunker complex at Legnica in southern Poland. On
August 3 and 4, NS A listening posts detected the
movement of large numbers of Soviet, East German, and
Polish troops to the Czech border, and further large-scale
troop movements were detected within the Soviet Baltic
and Belorussian Military Districts toward the Polish and
Czech borders.— But sadly, despite the numerous
indicators turning up in SIGINT and from other
intelligence sources, the CIA’s intelligence analysts at
Langley stuck by their judgment that the Soviets would
not intervene militarily in Czechoslovakia until after a
special meeting of the Czech Communist Party scheduled
for September 9, 1968. As it turned out, the Kremlin had
already decided that they had to intervene before the
Czech Party Congress meeting for fear that the gathering
of Czech officials might conceivably endorse a stronger
anti-Soviet political platform than that already advocated
by the Dub9ek government.

The best potential source available to the U.S.
intelligence community as to whether the Soviets
intended to invade Czechoslovakia came from the super-
secret joint CIA-NSA listening post located on the tenth
floor of the American embassy in Moscow that had been
intercepting the telephone calls of key Politburo members
since at least the early 1960s. There was also a separate
intercept operation hidden inside the British embassy in

Moscow. Both sites monitored a wide range of radio and
telephone communications inside the Russian capital,
including KGB, GRU, Soviet government, and police
radio messages, as well as the car phone conversations of
Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev and his successors.—
Despite the public disclosure of the Moscow embassy
SIGINT operation by the New York Times'm 1966, the
Russian leaders continued to talk away on their car
phones in the years that followed, and the CIA and NS A
continued to tape and translate them as fast as they came
in. The highly sensitive intelligence reports derived from
these intercepts, code-named Gamma Guppy, were
deemed to be so secret that they were distributed to a very
select few in the entire U.S. government. But Gamma
Guppy proved not to be a definitive source on the
question of Czechoslovakia. According to Ambassador
David Fischer, who in 1968 was a senior intelligence
analyst at the State Department:

We had an interesting system called Guppy. Guppy
was very compartmentalized special intelligence. It
was basically intercepts of the mobile phone lines of
the Russian leadership in Moscow. The reason I tell
this story is that on the eve of the invasion of Czech
o Slovak i a, the then head of the Warsaw Pact,
Marshal [Andrei Antonovich] Grechko, had gone
around to all the Warsaw Pact members to canvas
them whether or not they were going to invade. And

when he arrived back at Moscow airport, we were
able to intercept a telephone call Grechko made to
Brezhnev. The problem was they were no fools and
spoke in a word code — ^you know, the moon is red or
some silly phrase — and we didn’t have the faintest
idea whether that meant the invasion was on or off.—

Back in Washington, an accumulation of new SIGINT
convinced NS A intelligence analysts that the Soviets
intended to invade Czech oslo vaki a. On August 19, NS A
issued an alert message to the entire U.S. intelligence
community that warned that all signs appearing in
intercepted Soviet radio traffic indicated that the Russians
were about to invade Czechoslovakia. Later that morning,
NS A official David McManis, who was serving at the
time as the deputy chief of the White House Situation
Room, sent a brief note to National Security Advisor
Rostow, telling him that “the invasion they both thought
would happen appeared to be imminent.”—

The warnings out of NS A proved to be correct. A few
hours later, shortly after midnight on the morning of
August 20, a fresh batch of intercepts revealed that fifteen
to sixteen Soviet combat divisions and supporting
Warsaw Pact forces had crossed the border into
Czechoslovakia. In a matter of hours they had occupied
most of the largest cities and almost all key government
military installations inside Czechoslovakia.—

The October Surprise

One of the great secrets of the Vietnam War era was that
some of NSA’s best SIGINT product came from the
agency’s ability to read virtually all of the high-level
military and diplomatic traffic of the government of South
Vietnam as early as the October 1963 coup d’etat that
overthrew South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem.—

NSA’s intelligence continued to improve as the
Vietnam War intensified, largely because NS A had
supplied all of the South Vietnamese government’s
communications and encryption equipment to begin with.
The most important SIGINT materials coming out of
NS A were decrypts of the cable traffic between South
Vietnamese president Nguyen Van Thieu and his
ambassador in Washington, Bui Diem, which covered the
full gamut of U.S.-South Vietnamese relations. By the
fall of 1968, these NS A decrypts were deemed to be so
sensitive that they were placed in a separate reporting
compartment designated Gamma Gout, which limited
access to only a select few officials in Washington.
Thanks to the NS A decrypts. President Johnson knew
virtually everything about the South Vietnamese
government’s attitudes toward the Paris peace talks with
the North Vietnamese, as well as President Thieu’s
negotiating positions.—

It was no secret that an unwilling and angry Thieu felt
that Johnson had forced his government to participate in

the Paris talks. But Thieu knew that since Johnson was
not running for reelection, Thieu stood a pretty good
chance of being able to abandon the talks, depending on
who won the election in November — the Democrat
Hubert Humphrey or the Republican Party’s candidate,
Richard Nixon.

A little more than a week before the U.S. presidential
election, between October 23 and 27, NS A intercepted
several “eyes only” messages from Diem to Thieu. Senior
members of the Nixon entourage. Diem reported,
including longtime Republican political activist Anna
Chennault, who was the vice chair of the Republican
National Finance Committee, had asked that Thieustand
firm until after the election, when a Republican
administration could offer the South Vietnamese
government more favorable terms than an administration
headed by Humphrey. The Nixon campaign didn’t want
Thieu to do anything that might help Humphrey get
elected, so Nixon wanted Thieu to stall the Paris peace
talks by not attending until after the election.—

One of Johnson’s senior aides, Arthur Krim, recalled in
an interview, “The President told me very much off the
record . . . they had this cable that Madame [Anna]
Chennault had sent I guess it was [Nguyen Van] Thieu or
somebody in South Vietnam saying, ‘Don’t cooperate in
Paris. It will be helpful to Humphrey.’ I’m not giving you
the words, but the gist was wait for Nixon.”—

The substance of these NS A decrypts was repeatedly

confirmed by taps placed in Thieu’s office in Saigon by
the CIA, which gave the CIA station in Saigon
unparalleled access to Thieu’s thinking and the
machinations of the South Vietnamese government in
general.— An October 26 CIA memo to National Security
Advisor Rostow contained a bombshell derived from the
taps: “Thieu sees a definite connection between the moves
now underway and President Johnson’s wish to see Vice
President Humphrey elected. Thieu referred many times
to the U.S. elections and suggested to his visitors that the
current talks are designed to aid Humphrey’s candidacy.
Thieu has said that Johnson and Humphrey will be
replaced and then Nixon could change the U.S. position.”

On October 29, a week before Election Day, Rostow
wrote a memo to Johnson that began, ‘T have been
considering the explosive possibilities of the information
that we now have on how certain Republicans may have
inflamed the South Vietnamese to behave as they have
been behaving. There is no evidence that Mr. Nixon
himself is involved . . . Beyond that, the materials are so
explosive that they could gravely damage the country
whether Mr. Nixon is elected or not. If they get out in
their present form, they could be the subject of one of the
most acrimonious debates we have ever witnessed.”—

In late October, Johnson ordered FBI assistant director
Cartha “Deke” De-Loach to immediately place Anna
Chennault under surveillance and put wiretaps on all of

the telephone lines servicing the South Vietnamese
embassy in Washington. DeLoach recalls that he asked
Johnson, “Mr. President, please call the Attorney General
and instruct him to tell us to do this.” Shortly thereafter.
Attorney General Ramsey Clark instructed the FBI to
wiretap the South Vietnamese embassy. According to
DeLoach, the taps picked up no firm evidence that
American political figures were trying to influence South
Vietnamese politics. —

But in the end, Thieu followed the advice he had gotten
from Chennault. On November 2, he reneged on his
agreement to sit down in Paris at the same table with the
Viet Cong, dashing Johnson’s hopes of negotiating a last-
minute deal.

For reasons not yet known, Johnson chosenot to
publicly divulge what Nixon’s supporters had done,
perhaps because he knew that revealing it would cause
political carnage in Washington. Even if he had disclosed
the material, it probably would not have helped. Three
days later, on November 5, Humphrey was decisively
defeated, and on January 20, 1969, Richard Nixon
became the new president of the United States.

CHAPTER 9

Tragedy and Triumph
NS A During the Nixon, Ford, and
Carter Administrations

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness
has not overcome it.

^JOHN 1:5

The Post-Vietnam Blues

On the day that Richard Nixon was sworn in as the
president of the United States, January 20, 1969, NS A
was a billion-dollar colossus, consisting of a staggering
93,067 military and civilian personnel in the United States
and seventeen foreign countries. This meant that NS A
accounted for 62 percent of the 153,800 military and
civilian personnel then engaged in intelligence activities
for the Defense Department. -
The six years of the Nixon presidency (1969-1974)
were anything but a happy time for NS A. As America’s

involvement in the Vietnam War wound down, the U.S.
intelligence community’s resources were dramatically
slashed. It lost 40 percent of its budget and 50 percent of
its people. NS A fared worst of all. Its budget was cut by
one third and its manpower fell from 95,000 military and
civilian employees in 1969 (19,300 of whom worked at
NS A headquarters at Fort Meade) to approximately
50,000 by 1980, of whom 16,500 worked at Fort Meade.-
The cohesion and discipline of the agency’s draftee
military personnel deteriorated rapidly. Marijuana usage
among military SIGINT personnel increased dramatically.
Courts-martial and other forms of disciplinary action
involving SIGINT personnel rose dramatically, as did
desertion and AWOL rates. Radio intercept operators
staged work slowdowns to protest American military
operations in Southeast Asia, and NS A personnel even
participated in antiwar protests at home against the
Vietnam War.- The result, according to an NS A historian,
was “a scarcely mitigated disaster.

The agency’s relationship with the Nixon White House
was oftentimes strained. Nixon’s national security advisor
from 1969 to 1973, Henry Kissinger, established a
precedent followed by many of his successors by
centralizing control over the entire U.S. government’s
national security apparatus in his office in the West Wing
of the White House, including control of key intelligence
assets, especially the super-sensitive SIGINT product

coming out of NS A. Kissinger ordered that all NS A
intercepts mentioning him or Nixon by name be routed to
him exclusively and to nobody else in the U.S.
intelligence community. According to former CIA deputy
director for intelligence Ray Cline, the CIA objected
strongly to this practice, stating that “it made a very
serious impact, adverse to the efficient workings of the
intelligence community.” Kissinger also ordered that
certain particularly sensitive NS A intercepts not be shared
with the secretaries of state and defense. Colonel Robert
Pursley, assistant to Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird,
recalled that Laird “always had the feeling we weren’t
getting all the [NS A] stuff the White House was. Very
little intercept mail was going to Mel and most of what
we got was so innocuous.” When Kissinger became
secretary of state in September 1973, he continued the
practice of maintaining a back-channel flow of
intelligence from NS A.- Senior NS A officials who dealt
with the White House, such as David McManis, the head
of the White House Situation Room, walked a fine line
trying to keep on the right side of the law, and not always
successfully. As a declassified NS A history admits, “It
was not good for SIGINT, and it was deadly for the
presidency.”-

The Shootdown of the EC-121

On April 14, 1969, two North Korean MiG-21 fighters

shot down a U.S. Navy EC-121M SIGINT aircraft ninety
miles southeast of the North Korean port of Chongjin,
over international waters. The aircraft and its crew of
thirty-one, including nine navy and marine SIGINT
operators, were lost.-

The EC-I2IM took off from Atsugi Naval Air Station,
in Japan, at seven a.m. local time on what was supposed
to be a routine Beggar Shadow SIGINT collection
mission over the Sea of Japan. The mission had been
flown more than 190 times without incident by U.S. Navy
and Air Force reconnaissance aircraft during the first
three months of 1969 alone, so local navy commanders
thought there was no reason that this mission should be
any different. -

The U.S. Air Force listening post at Osan followed
every moment of the North Korean attack until one forty-
nine p.m., when intercepted North Korean radar tracking
intercepts showed the North Korean MiGs returning to
base and the stricken EC- 121 descending rapidly in a
spiral toward the sea.-

Radio operators at the EC-121 ’s home base at Atsugi
initially hoped that the aircraft’s pilot had “hit the deck”
to evade the MiGs. But when the plane did not answer
repeated calls, at two forty-four p.m. a CRITIC message
was issued noting only that the EC-121 was missing and
its fate was unknown. An hour and fifteen minutes later.
North Korean state radio announced that its fighters had

shot down an American “spy plane.”—

On April 18, an angry President Nixon revealed at a
press conference that NS A had read the North Korean air
defense radar tracking codes, stating, “What is even more
important, they knew [that the aircraft was over
international waters] based on their radar. Therefore this
attack was unprovoked. It was deliberate. It was without
warning.” Officials at NS A fell off their chairs when they
heard this astounding compromise of a critical NS A
capability. A former senior NS A official recalled, “I know
it was wrong, but I wanted to take Nixon across my knee
and give him the paddling of his life for what he had
done. It was inexcusable.” —

Exit Carter, Enter Gayler

In August 1969, NS A director General Marshall “Paf’
Carter retired from active duty. To put it mildly, there
were very few tears shed in Washington when Pat Carter
stepped down after four years running the agency.
Champagne corks popped throughout CIA headquarters in
Langley, Virginia, on Carter’s last day in office. His
subdued retirement ceremony at the Pentagon lasted only
ten minutes, with an NS A historian dryly noting, “The
Pentagon was [sic] happy to see the last of Marshall
Carter as Carter was to leave the wars.”—

Carter’s replacement was a distinguished fifty- four-
year-old navy vice admiral named Noel Gayler

(pronounced “guy-ler”), who got the job because he was a
protege of Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, the new chief of naval
operations. Gayler was considered by many in the
Pentagon to be a perfect fit because he was one of the
brightest and most capable officers in the military. The
son of a career navy officer, he had graduated from the
U.S. Naval Academy in 1935 and spent most of his career
as a naval aviator. During World War II, he had been a
fighter pilot flying off the aircraft carrier USS Lexington,
winning three Navy Crosses, the first naval aviator to
achieve this distinction. He was also the third navy officer
to have flown a jet aircraft and had piloted the longest
flight to date launched from an aircraft carrier. Prior to
joining NS A, Gayler had overseen the selection of nuclear
attack targets inside the USSR. But unlike his recent
predecessors at NS A, he had no prior intelligence
experience.—

The job was a stepping-stone to higher office, Gayler
had been assured, but it came with a price tag. Secretary
of Defense Laird approved the selection of Gayler and his
counterpart at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA),
General Donald Bennett, because, as Laird later recalled,
he could count on their loyalty. As Laird told them in a
meeting in his office, they would haveto be loyal to him if
they expected to “get four stars after four years. And
goddam it, they were loyal.”—

Gayler was not an easy man to get to know, much less
like. Described by an NS A historian as “dynamic.

mercurial, and high-strung,” he was a strict, by-the-book
naval officer who ran a tight ship and did not tolerate
dissent.—

Because he did not have a technological background
Gayler was never able to fully grasp the details of the
important work that his agency performed. “We were told
to ‘dumb-down’ our briefings,” a former NS A official
recalled.— Frequently frustrated by the complexity of
NSA’s mission, Gayler later told a congressional staff
member, “I often felt like a fire hose was held to my
mouth.” He spent most of his three years as director
trying to understand the mechanics of how his agency
worked, and he wondered why a more experienced navy
intelligence officer had not been selected for the post.
Like so many directors before him, Gayler depended
heavily on his civilian deputy, Louis Tordella, to run the
agency while he handled high-level policy matters,
especially NSA’s testy relations with the U.S. military.—

SIGINT and SALT I

NS A played an enormously important role in the
negotiations that led up to the signing, on May 26, 1972,
in Moscow of two Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty
agreements (collectively known to posterity as SALT I).
The first agreement was the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM)
Treaty, which limited both the United States and the
USSR to a set number of ABM launchers. The second

agreement set firm limits on the total number of strategic
nuclear weapons that the two nations could deploy and
established strict guidelines for what new strategic nuclear
weapons could be developed in the future.

The covert intercept posts inside the American and
British embassies in Moscow, code-named Broadside and
Tryst, had collected highly valuable intelligence, code-
named Gamma Guppy, since at least the early 1960s, by
listening in on the Soviet leadership as they talked over
the mobile phones in their Chaika limousines. These
intercepts were deemed to be so sensitive that their
distribution was limited to a very small number of
American and British government officials. Then, in
1972, the Canadian SIGINT organization, CBNRC,
opened its own small clandestine SIGINT intercept
facility in Moscow (code-named Stephanie), hidden
inside the military attache’s office in the Canadian
embassy. The Stephanie intercept equipment, which was
supplied by NS A, was able to intercept many of the radio
and telephone signals that were being broadcast from the
top of the huge Ostankino radio and TV tower, which
loomed over downtown Moscow.—

The Gamma Guppy intercepts provided a window,
albeit a narrow and imperfect one, into what was going on
inside the Kremlin, including decision-making processes,
as well as details on the organization of the Soviet
Politburo and the personalities and behavior of key
Politburo figures.— The current director of national

intelligence, Rear Admiral John “Mike” McConnell, who
served as director of NS A from 1992 to 1996, recalled:

In the mid-1970s, NS A had access to just about
everything the Russian leadership said to themselves
and about one another ... we knew Brezhnev’s waist
size, his headaches, his wife, his wife’s problems, his
kids’ problems, his intentions on the Politburo with
regard to positions, his opinion on the American
leadership, his attitude on negotiations, and on and
on and on it goes.—

But in September 1971, nationally syndicated
newspaper columnist Jack Anderson revealed in an article
that “for years, the CIA has been able to listen to the
kingpins of the Kremlin banter, bicker, and backbite
among themselves.” According to Anderson’s column,
the intercepts revealed that “the Soviet leaders gossip
about one another and complain about their ailments like
old maids.” After Anderson’s column appeared, the
Russians reportedly shut off NSA’s access to their car
telephone traffic. According to Admiral McConnell, “Jack
Anderson published it on Tuesday and it was gone on
Thursday, never to be recovered.”—

Despite the fact that Gamma Guppy had been
compromised, the Soviet leaders continued to use this
insecure form of communications. The Gamma Guppy
intelligence continued to roll in. For example, on May 22,

1972, four days before SALT was signed, National
Security Advisor Kissinger informed President Nixon that
“very recent developments in Moscow indicate that
[General Secretary Leonid] Brezhnev has encountered
certain problems regarding his foreign policy . . . There is
a suggestion in a sensitive intercept that Brezhnev used
his friend [Soviet Defense Minister Andrei] Grechko to
justify his military policies, including SALT.”— On May
26, the embassy listening post intercepted a crucial radio-
telephone conversation between Brezhnev and Grechko
about the Soviet negotiating position on the last day of the
summit meeting with President Nixon before the signing
of SALT 1. Grechko assured Brezhnev that the huge SS-
19 ICBM then being tested could be placed inside the
existing SS-1 1 ICBM silo, thus bypassing the provision of
article 2 of SALT I, which limited increases in silo
dimensions to 1 5 percent. According to publicly available
information, American negotiators “maneuvered with [the
SIGINT intercepts] so effectively that they came home
with the agreement not to build an antiballistic missile
defense system.” A senior U.S. intelligence official who
read the intercepts was quoted as saying, “That’s the sort
of thing that pays NSA’s wages for a year.”—

But after more U.S. news reports (many of them
inaccurate) during the early 1970s revealed the role
played by the Gamma Guppy intercepts, the Soviets
apparently decided to take action. In 1973, they began
installing powerful jamming equipment in apartment

buildings surrounding the U.S. embassy, and then
periodically bombarded the building with microwave
signals. U.S. intelligence officials believed the Russians
were trying to interfere with or block American
eavesdropping equipment. But it was not until May 1975
that the Russians began a continuous microwave
bombardment that, according to a declassified CIA report,
was done because of “Soviet embarrassment and dismay
caused by US press accounts . . . alluding to a US
capability to intercept micro wave communications in
Moscow.”—

Lew Allen Takes the Helm

In June 1972, Admiral Gayler left NSA — and got his
fourth star when Nixon promoted him to the post of
heading up CINCPAC, in Hawaii.

His replacement as director of NSA was Air Force
Lieutenant General Samuel Phillips, fifty-one, who like
Gayler had no intelligence experience before arriving at
Fort Meade. Phillips was an accomplished research
engineer, holding a master’s degree in electrical
engineering from the University of Michigan. He worked
on nuclear delivery systems (aircraft and missiles) and the
Apollo project, and just prior to his appointment to NSA
he had been responsible for launching missiles and
satellites into space.—

Phillips did not remain at NSA long enough to leave an

imprint, much less a legacy. According to his successor,
Lieutenant General Lew Allen, shortly after arriving at
NSA, Phillips became aware of his agency’s involvement
in a number of peripheral issues relating to the escalating
Watergate scandal, which “influenced his determination
to move on.”— The one significant decision Phillips made
that was to have a long-term impact was to begin
“civilianizing” many SIGINT collection functions
formerly performed by the military, as well as automating
many of NSA’s SIGINT processing, analytic, and
reporting functions so as to reduce the agency’s huge
civilian payroll.—

On August 19, 1973, Phillips was replaced by Allen, a
forty-eight-year-old U.S. Air Force officer who was a rare
individual for the U.S. military — a certifiable genius who
also had a talent for management and a deep
understanding of, and interest in, technical matters. He
started his air force career as a nuclear weapons ordnance
officer with the Strategic Air Command, but his intellect
predestined him for greater things. The air force sent him
to the University of Illinois, where he obtained both a
master’s degree and a Ph.D. in nuclear physics. Upon
graduating, he was ordered to the Los Alamos nuclear
weapons laboratory, where he worked from 1954 to 1957
as a physicist in the nuclear weapons test division
studying the effects of high-altitude nuclear detonations
on missiles. He then moved into the field of satellite
reconnaissance, serving for eight years with the U.S. Air

Force component of the National Reconnaissance Office

in Los Angeles, from 1965 to 1973. After a brief tenure as

the assistant to the director of the CIA for the Intelligence

Community Staff, Allen’s benefactor in Washington,

Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger, arranged for him

to become director of NSA.—

Perhaps one of the brightest men ever to sit in the NSA

director’s office, Allen proved to be the perfect man to

hold the post during what would be one of the most

difficult periods in the agency’s history. Some of Allen’s

subordinates at NSA recalled that the highly focused and

businesslike director’s face didn’t reveal much about what

he was thinking. Those who got to know him quickly

warmed to him, even those who were not necessarily

friends of NSA. L. Britt Snider, who in 1975 was the

chief counsel of the Church Committee, which was

investigating NSA’s domestic activities, described Allen

as “a man of impeccable integrity,” seemingly a rare

virtue in those troubled days in Washington.—

Allen’s four-year tenure as NSA director was marred by

controversy, with NSA being forced to admit publicly in

August 1975 that it had engaged in illegal domestic

eavesdropping since 1945. Allen was compelled to testify

before Congress, the first time ever that an NSA director

testified in public session about the activities of the
30

agency.—

NSA Enters the Spaee Raee

Unbeknownst to the American public, Allen’s tenure was
also marked by a number of secret cryptologic successes,
many of them brought on by the introduction of new high-
tech spying systems, such as a new generation of satellites
placed into orbits chosen specifically to facilitate the
monitoring of Soviet communications traffic.

Three new types of SIGINT satellites, whose classified
nicknames were Canyon, Jumpseat, and Chalet, were put
into orbit starting in the late 1960s and continuing
throughout the 1970s. These satellites gave NS A access
for the first time to high-level telephone traffic deep
inside the USSR that was being carried over micro wave
radio-relay networks.— The level of detail obtained from
the intercepts produced by these satellites was so high that
a former American intelligence officer stated “We could
hear their teeth chattering in the Ukraine.”—

The CIA’s brand-new Rhyolite SIGINT satellite
revolutionized the U.S. intelligence community’s
knowledge of Soviet strategic weapons development by
intercepting previously unheard telemetry data coming
from Soviet strategic ballistic missile and bomber test
sites deep inside the Soviet Union. The former CIA
deputy director for science and technology Albert
Wheelon was to later write that thanks to this satellite,
“the intelligence community eventually had almost the
same data on each ICBM flight as that available to Soviet
engineers. It was immediately clear from the telemetry

what type of missile had been flown. When test launches
failed, the reason was usually apparent in the telemetry
data and the missile’s reliability could be established with
some confidence. As the Soviets changed from single
warhead missiles to multiple warhead reentry vehicles,
that change was apparent in the data.”—

Then, in the fall of 1976, the U.S. Navy ELINT
organization launched into orbit the first of its brand-new
ocean surveillance satellites, whose classified nickname
was Parcae. The system had the unclassified designation
of White Cloud, and its clusters of satellites continuously
orbited the earth, allowing the navy to track the
movements of virtually every warship — Russian, Chinese,
or otherwise — on a real-time basis and to a degree that
heretofore had not been possible or even imagined.—
According to an Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI)-
sponsored historical study, “ELINT collection and
analysis improved to such an extent that individual Soviet
units could be tracked through entire deployments by
following the radiation emitted by their navigation and
surface- search radar sets.”—

The 1973 Arab-Israeli War

On October 6, 1973, one hundred thousand Egyptian
troops backed by one thousand tanks launched a surprise
attack on Israel across the Suez Canal, and fifty thousand
Syrian troops advanced into the Golan Heights. Not only

were the Israelis caught entirely by surprise, but so was
the U.S. intelligence community. Postmortem studies
conducted by the community revealed that NSA’s
reporting on Egypt and Syria’s preparations for attacking
Israel either had been rejected out of hand by the CIA’s
intelligence analysts or had been so secret that the vast
majority of the analysts at Langley had not been cleared
to see it.—

The Top Secret Codeword daily and weekly SIGINT
summaries prior to the attack from NSA’s Office of the
Middle East, North Africa, Cuba, Central and South
America (G6), then headed by navy captain Dwane
Yoder, were chock full of high-quality intelligence
reporting about political, military, and economic activities
in the Arab world. Not only did NS A have particularly
deep and comprehensive insights into the capabilities of
the Egyptian army, the Arab world’s largest, but it also
had detected the arrival of North Korean fighter pilots and
air defense personnel as well as Iraqi Hawker Hunter and
Libyan Mirage fighters. The CIA and NS A clandestine
listening posts hidden inside the U.S. embassies in Cairo
and Damascus were also providing Washington with
excellent intelligence from their coverage of local
government, military, and police radio traffic. A former
CIA operations officer who was in Cairo in 1973 recalled,
“We even knew what [Egyptian president Anwar] Sadat
was telling his ministers on the phone.”—

The problem was that since 1967, CIA intelligence

analysts back in Washington had formed a distinctly
negative impression of the readiness and overall combat
capabilities of the Egyptian and Syrian militaries, a view
encouraged by reports supplied by Israeli intelligence.
When Sadat kicked his Russian military advisers out of
Egypt in July 1972, DIA and CIA intelligence analysts
further downgraded their estimates of Egyptian combat
capabilities, particularly those of Sadat’s air force, an
estimate that was, unfortunately, reinforced by some NS A
SIGINT intelligence sent to Langley.—

And yet, starting in the summer of 1973, accumulating
NS A SIGINT data clearly indicated that Egypt and Syria
were preparing to attack Israel, and in late September
NSA reported that it would be “a major offensive.” The
SIGINT evidence for these preparations was voluminous
and highly detailed, including the fact that the Egyptian
military had canceled leaves and mobilized its reserves,
and that a special command post outside Cairo that in the
past had been used only for crisis situations had been
activated. Extremely sensitive NSA Top Secret Gamma
intercepts also revealed that “a major foreign nation [the
Soviet Union] had become extremely sensitive to the
prospect of war and concerned about their citizens and
dependents in Egypt.” All this led NSA intelligence
analysts to conclude that war was imminent.—

The CIA postmortem study noted, “The information
provided by those parts of the Intelligence Community
responsible for intelligence collection [NSA] was

sufficient to prompt such a warning. Such information
(derived from both human and technical sources) was not
conclusive but was plentiful, ominous, and often
accurate.”—

But the CIA analysts responsible for the Middle East
rejected the intelligence reporting and warnings coming
from NSA. Navy captain Norman Klar, who in 1974 took
over as head of the NSA’s G6 office, recalled, “the NIO
[the CIA’s national intelligence officer] refused to accept
SIGINT information that an attack was imminent. He
insisted it was an exercise, because the Arabs wouldn’t be
‘stupid enough’ to attack Israel.”— Both DIA and the CIA
ignored or paid scant heed to the NSA warnings, and the
CIA Watch Committee chose to ignore the data
completely and reported to the White House that war in
the Middle East was ^orimminent. The CIA postmortem
study concluded, “Those elements of the Intelligence
Community responsible for the production of finished
intelligence [notably the CIA!] did not perceive the
growing possibility of an Arab attack and thus did not
warn of its imminence.”—

The CIA protested, after the fact, that its analysts had
been swamped by hundreds of unintelligible SIGINT
summaries, but NSA fired back, arguing that if it had
been able to get its unvarnished SIGINT summaries
through to the White House without the CIA’s
intelligence analysts putting their “spin” on the material, it

would have been clear that Egypt and Syria were about to
attack.—

NS A director Lew Allen “resolved that in the future
[he] would ensure that a separate view be presented when
the judgment of SIGINT analysts [differed] from the
common [i.e., CIA, DIA, and other agencies’] view.”
Allen and his successors fought furiously to ensure that in
future the White House would be fully informed about
their agency’s views, especiallyif they conflicted with
those of the CIA.—

Norm Klar 's Tour de Force

In February 1974, Frank Raven, head of NSA’s G Group,
which was responsible for SIGINT coverage of all
noncommunist countries around the world, gave Norman
Klar command of his group’s largest and most important
unit, the 400-man G6 office. Klar was one of NSA’s best
cryptanalysts. Trained as a Chinese linguist, he had spent
much of his career in the Far East, serving tours of duty in
Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines before returning to
Fort Meade in 1971. Raven had initially given him the
task of running the part of G Group that broke the codes
and ciphers of India and Pakistan. Much of the
intelligence reporting produced by Klar’s division during
the December 1971 war between India and Pakistan had
ended up on the desks of President Nixon and Henry
Kissinger.—

Over the next six years, Klar’s unit handled a half-
dozen wars and untold numbers of smaller conflicts,
including the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, the
Cuban military interventions in Angola and Ethiopia, the
bloody civil war in Lebanon, the 1976 Israeli hostage
rescue mission at Entebbe, Uganda, the fall of the Somoza
regime in Nicaragua, the collapse of the shah of Iran’s
regime and his replacement by the radical cleric Ayatollah
Khomeini, the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran and
the resulting hostage crisis, and, finally, the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Klar later joked that his
unit was NSA’s “crisis management shop,” since nothing
that G6 handled was ever routine. “We operated under a
microscope . . . sometimes we were handling two or three
high profile crises at the same time with everything we
were producing going straight to the White House.”—
Klar’s unit became the hub of the U.S. intelligence
community’s first counterterrorism effort, in 1972, and
made the first breaks into the communications of Yasser
Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the
host of competing Palestinian terrorist organizations in
places like Lebanon. In 1973, the unit’s SIGINT helped
thwart a plot to bomb Israeli diplomatic establishments
and businesses in New York City, and G6 was
instrumental in warning that Palestinian terrorists
intended to assassinate Secretary of State Kissinger
during a 1974 visit to Damascus. By 1979, NS A was
reading some of Arafat’s most sensitive cable traffic and

listening in on his international telephone calls to great
effect.—

Klar’s unit performed well during the civil war in
Angola that raged from 1975 through the late 1980s.
When the first Cuban combat troops were sent there in
September 1975 to prop up the Soviet-supported Angolan
regime, the cryptanalysts in G6 made daily, highly
detailed reports on the Cuban troops and their Soviet
military advisers, including information on Cuban combat
losses suffered while they fought with South African
forces in late 1975 and early 1976.—

When civil war erupted in Lebanon in 1975, followed
almost immediately by Syrian military intervention in the
country, NS A stepped up its SIGINT coverage of what
was going on there, including the redeployment of a MiG-
21 fighter regiment to A1 Qusayr, in northeastern Syria,
where it could be used in Lebanon.—

SIGINT and the Panama Canal Negotiations

In 1974, President Gerald Ford opened negotiations with
Panamanian strongman General Omar Torrijos over
transferring control of the Panama Canal from the United
States to Panama. By 1976, the two countries were
beginning to make significant headway in their
negotiations, despite the fact that Torrijos had sought
added leverage by having Lieutenant Colonel Manuel
Noriega, the head of the Guardia Nacional G-2, Panama’s

foreign intelligence organization, stage demonstrations
and attacks on Americans.

Virtually everything Torrijos said over the telephone
from his office and from his home in Farallon, outside
Panama City, was carried over an easily intercepted and
American-built micro wave network. His conversations
were secretly sucked up by a nondescript U.S. Army
antenna array at Albrook Air Force Station, which
overlooked Panama City. Torrijos’s calls were
immediately forwarded to U.S. Army intercept operators
at Fort Clayton, inside the U.S. -controlled Panama Canal
Zone, who taped the calls and urgently forwarded all the
processed material to NS A headquarters.— Klar’s Spanish
linguists and analysts in the G6 office, on the third floor
of the NS A operations building, sent hastily made
translations and analysts’ comments via teletype to the
State Department and the NSC “within 24 hours after
their Panamanian counterparts got them.”—

This continued from 1975 to 1977, providing the United
States with not only salacious material about Torrijos’s
extracurricular love life, but also vital details on the
protracted canal negotiations. The White House and State
Department customers effusively commended NS A for
this invaluable information, and in 1978, NSA awarded
the annual Travis Trophy, denoting the best strategic
SIGINT unit working for NSA, to the U.S. Army’s 470th
Military Intelligence Group in Panama.—

But in the spring of 1976, U.S. Army intelligence
officials picked up the first indications that Colonel
Noriega had penetrated the American SIGINT operation
in Panama, and they soon discovered that a twenty-year-
old sergeant and Spanish linguist assigned to the 408th
ASA Company at Fort Clayton had passed classified
information to Noriega’s Guardia Nacional G-2. A full-
scale inquiry, designated Canton Song, was launched into
the sergeant’s activities on April 23, 1976.—

After an intensive investigation of, and a grant of
immunity to, the sergeant (who also implicated another
linguist in his unit), it was determined that vital
intelligence, including details on how the U.S. Army
intended to defend the Panama Canal, had been betrayed
to the Panamanians. For his work, the sergeant received
only sixteen thousand dollars, much of which he quickly
blew on local prostitutes. In January 1976, he tried to sell
the same information to the Cuban embassy in Panama
City, but the Cubans threw him out, believing that he was
a CIA agent provocateur.—

Though the two sergeants were guilty of espionage, the
army decided that, because they had been immunized, it
would be too difficult to prosecute them and dropped the
case. But senior officials at NS A demanded that the Ford
administration not let these men go unpunished, and in
late 1976, NS A director Allen sent a memo to CIA
director George H. W. Bush recommending that both
sergeants be prosecuted for espionage. Bush declined

Allen’s request, arguing that he had no authority to
overturn the army’s decision, but the real reason for not
doing so was that it would have exposed the ongoing
intelligence operations in Panama, and even possibly
derailed negotiations over the draft Panama Canal
Treaty.—

In January 1977, Gerald Ford left office and was
replaced by President Jimmy Carter. The Carter
administration felt that it had to inform the House and
Senate intelligence committees about the compromise of
the NS A operation, but asked the committees not to do
anything about it because the matter “was still under
investigation.”— In the end, the two sergeants were given
honorable discharges, the case was closed, and on
September 7, 1977, the Panama Canal Treaty was signed.

Bobby Ray Inman

On July 5, 1977, Lieutenant General Allen stepped down
as director of NS A, was given another star, and was
appointed commander of the U.S. Air Force Systems
Command. A year later, he became the air force chief of
staff, serving until his retirement in June 1982.

His replacement as NS A director was forty-six-year-old
Vice Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, the youngest man ever
to hold the position. The son of a gas station owner in tiny
Rhonesboro, Texas, Inman was a childhood prodigy,
graduating from the University of Texas with honors at

nineteen. After graduation, he taught school for a year,
then joined the navy in 1951, never intending to do more
than a single three-year tour of duty. But Inman chose to
remain in the navy, and over a thirty-year career he rose
rapidly through the ranks, holding a series of increasingly
important positions in naval intelligence. He was a
protege of Admiral James Holloway III, who first got
Inman the job of chief of intelligence at Pacific Fleet.
When Holloway became chief of naval operations in July
1974, he got Inman promoted to rear admiral and the
position of director of ONI, which Inman held from
September 1974 to July 1976, before becoming vice
director of DIA, a position he held from 1976 to 1977. —
Agency veterans were stunned by the torrid pace that
the workaholic Inman set; he got up at four a.m. every
day except Sunday to read the stack of intelligence reports
that had come in overnight and was usually in his office at
Fort Meade by six. He drove his senior managers and
support staff nuts as they tried to keep up with their
demanding boss. A typical workday was ten to twelve
hours, six days a week and half a day on Sunday after
church services. But Inman was perpetually late for
appointments and required a bevy of executive assistants
to help him keep track of all the meetings he needed to
attend and the papers that required his signature. An NS A
historian has written of him, “He appeared perpetually
calm, but in reality was about as stable as high voltage
across an air gap. —

Charming and possessing a dry sense of humor, Inman
was infamous within NS A for his awkwardness and
clumsiness, earning himself the nickname the Blue Klutz.
But those who worked for him, almost without exception,
liked and respected him.—

Inman proved to be a relentless and vociferous advocate
for his agency, which immediately put him at odds with
the CIA. Antagonism between the two agencies’ top brass
had been growing since the 1973 Arab-Israeli War
debacle, leading one senior CIA official to recall the days
when “NS A looked respectfully and appreciatively to
CIA for guidance as to what it should collect and produce.
It also depended frequently on the Agency for support in
its annual quests for funds ... As time passed and its
budget doubled, tripled, and quadrupled, NS A began to
swell its corporate chest and develop a personality and
style of its own. An organization which began with a
serious inferiority complex gradually developed a feeling
that it has ‘a comer on the market’ in terms of intelligence
fit to print.”—

When the CIA’s new director. Admiral Stansfield
Turner, tried to rein NS A in by cutting its $1.3 billion
budget, Inman went around the CIA and began
intensively lobbying on behalf of his agency at the White
House. In the process, he made a number of important
friends, particularly President Carter’s cmsty national
security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Brzezinski’s
deputy. Colonel William Odom, who would become the

director of NS A in 1985. Inman also became a one-man
public relations firm trumpeting NSA’s accomplishments,
even giving on-the-record press interviews, something
that previous NS A directors had never done.—

After a somewhat rocky start, Inman’s relationship with
Brzezinski became increasingly close, even though
“Zbig” sometimes wanted, according to Inman, “to push
me to do things that I think the Agency should not be
involved in.”— Like Henry Kissinger, Brzezinski insisted
that NS A send him, on an “eyes only” basis, any decrypts
containing his name or the name of any other senior
Carter administration official. Inman was only too happy
to oblige. His brilliant performances before the Senate and
House intelligence committees are legendary. During his
tenure at NS A, Inman assiduously courted Congress,
established an NS A Legislative Affairs Office, and, for
the first time, sent reports detailing NSA’s highly
sensitive SIGINT activities to the two congressional
intelligence oversight committees.—

He needed ah the friends on Capitol Hill he could get.
Upon moving into the director’s office at Fort Meade,
Inman discovered that NS A, with a staff of forty thousand
soldiers and civilians, needed money — lots of money — to
deal with a number of major problems that he inherited
from Allen. Before taking over at NS A, Allen gave Inman
a report on the Soviet cryptanalytic effort, which was on
the verge of major success but in desperate need of more

money and personnel, which were needed to achieve the
anticipated breakthroughs. Another briefing paper given
to him in 1977 noted that the new generation of SIGINT
satellites in orbit over the Earth had “achieved
outstanding performance in a number of areas.” But the
report noted that more could be done and a rationale was
needed for the next generation of huge SIGINT satellites
due to be launched into space in the late 1970s. The most
pressing problem he inherited was an old one — ^NSA’s
analysts were drowning in a sea of intercepts that was
growing incrementally every day. A report noted that
NS A had “not developed capabilities to efficiently deal
with the increased amount of raw data generated by new
collection systems.”—

Inman got $150 million in 1977 to modernize NSA’s
worldwide operations, with huge appropriations in the
following years to expand NSA’s SIGINT coverage to
previously ignored areas of the world, build new and
improved SIGINT satellites, and develop and build a host
of new high-tech systems to gain access to a new
generation of Soviet communications systems. Inman’s
advancement of NSA’s interests earned him the enmity of
many within the U.S. intelligence community, particularly
CIA director Turner.—

Inman’s numerous battles with Turner still reverberate
in the halls of NS A and the CIA. Turner was determined
to gain a greater degree of control over NS A. Years later,
he would describe it as “the largest agency in the

intelligence community; a top command of some general
or admiral; and a proud, highly competent organization
that does not like to keep its light under a bushel ... a
pretty remote member of the [intelligence] community.
The physical remoteness [from Washington] is
compounded by the fact that the NS A deals in such highly
secret materials that it is often reluctant to share them
with others lest a leak spoil their ability to get that kind of
information again. It is a loner organization.”—

Inman struggled to get NS A out from under the control
of the CIA’s National Intelligence Tasking Center,
Turner’s creation designed to coordinate intelligence
tasking and requirements within the U.S. intelligence
community. The two men were soon no longer on
speaking terms, forcing Frank Carlucci, the deputy
director of the CIA, into the uncomfortable position of
acting as go-between. But most of all, Inman fought to
dismantle Turner’s proposed APEX code word
classification system, because NS A feared that it would
ultimately give the CIA control over the dissemination of
NSA-produced intelligence. Inman and his deputies
managed to stall implementation of the APEX system
until the Reagan administration came into power in
January 1981 and promptly killed the plan.—

Under Inman’s direction, by the late 1970s, NS A had
become the top U.S. producer of hard, usable intelligence.
During Inman’s watch, the agency broke into a series of
high-level Soviet cryptographic systems, giving the U.S.

intelligence community high-level access to Soviet
military and political thinking for the first time in years.—

The Soviet Target

Going into the 1970s, NS A and its British partner,
GCHQ, were deriving a moderate degree of high-level
intelligence about the USSR from sources like the
Gamma Guppy intercepts from Moscow, and another
program that enabled NS A to read communications traffic
between Moscow and the Soviet embassy in Cairo in the
months leading up to the October 1973 Arab-Israeli
War.— In the United States, Project Aquarian gave NS A
the ability to tell which U.S. government telephone calls
the Soviets were intercepting from inside their diplomatic
establishments in Washington, New York, and San
Francisco. One intercept caught the KGB listening in on
Attorney General Griffin Bell discussing classified
information on an unsecure telephone line.—

But according to some sources, the overall importance
of SIGINT within the U.S. intelligence community
continued to decline in the 1970s, particularly with regard
to the USSR. This was due in part to a GCHQ official
named Geoffrey Arthur Prime, a Russian linguist at
Cheltenham from 1968 to 1977, who was arrested in 1982
and charged with spying for the Soviet Union. NS A
officials confirmed that while Prime was working at
GCHQ headquarters, NS A and GCHQ lost their ability to

read a number of important Soviet systems when the
Russians abruptly and without warning changed their
codes or modified their communications procedures in
order to make them impenetrable to the American and
British cryptanalysts. In November 1982, Prime pleaded
guilty and was sentenced to thirty-eight years in prison.—
A 1976 study of U.S. intelligence reporting on the
Soviet Union, however, found that virtually all of the
material contained in the CIA’s National Intelligence
Estimates about Soviet strategic and conventional military
forces came from SIGINT and satellite imagery. A similar
study found that less than 5 percent of the finished
intelligence being generated by the U.S. intelligence
community came from HUMINT.— Moreover, rapid
changes in intelligence-gathering and information-
processing technology proved to be a godsend for NS A.
In 1976, NSA retired its huge IBM Harvest computer
system, which had been the mainstay of the agency’s
cryptanalysts since February 1962. It was replaced by the
first of computer genius Seymour Cray’s new Cray-1
supercomputers. Standing six feet six inches high, the
Cray supercomputer was a remarkable piece of
machinery, capable of performing 150-200 million
calculations a second, giving it ten times the computing
power of any other computer in the world. More
important, the Cray allowed the agency’s cryptanalysts
for the first time to tackle the previously invulnerable

Soviet high-level cipher systems.—

Shortly after Bobby Inman became the director of NS A
in 1977, cryptanalysts working for the agency’s Soviet
code-breaking unit, A Group, headed by Ann Caracristi,
succeeded in solving a number of Soviet cipher systems
that gave NS A access to high-level Soviet
communications. Credit for this accomplishment goes to a
small and ultra- secretive unit called the Rainfall Program
Management Division, headed from 1974 to 1978 by a
native New Yorker named Lawrence Castro. Holding
bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering
from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Castro
got into the SIGINT business in 1965 when he joined
ASA as a young second lieutenant. In 1967, he converted
to civilian status and joined NS A as an engineer in the
agency’s Research and Engineering Organization, where
he worked on techniques for solving high-level Russian
cipher systems.—

By 1976, thanks in part to some mistakes made by
Russian cipher operators, NS A cryptanalysts were able to
reconstruct some of the inner workings of the Soviet
military’s cipher systems. In 1977, NS A suddenly was
able to read at least some of the communications traffic
passing between Moscow and the Russian embassy in
Washington, including one message from Russian
ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin to the Soviet Foreign
Ministry repeating the advice given him by Henry
Kissinger on how to deal with the new Carter

administration in the still-ongoing SALT II
negotiations.—

The Iranian Revolution

NS A was successful in deciphering the most sensitive
communications traffic and high-level thinking of the
Iranian government prior to the fall of the shah in
February 1979, but there is little indication that the
intelligence analysts at the CIA took much note of this
material. Instead, Langley seems to have relied on the
daily reporting of the U.S. military attaches in Tehran,
who generally presented a more optimistic view of the
viability of the shah’s regime than most other experts.—
When the February 1979 revolution brought the Islamic
fundamentalist cleric Ayatollah Khomeini to power, the
CIA’s Tacksman intercept bases in Iran, which monitored
Russian missile telemetry signals, were shut down.
However, NS A continued to exploit high-level Iranian
diplomatic and military communications traffic, the best
intercepts coming from the Rhyolite SIGINT satellites
parked over North Africa, which were retargeted to
intercept Irani an military tactical radio traffic.—

The 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War

After Vietnamese forces invaded Cambodia in late
December 1977, Beijing ratcheted up a war of words
directed at Vietnam, forcing it to withdraw its troops in

January 1978. The first signs that China had begun
preparing for a potential war with Vietnam came in
October 1978, when SIGINT detected Chinese army units
leaving their garrisons in and around the southern Chinese
city of Kunming and taking up positions along China’s
border with Vietnam. The buildup of troops and aircraft
continued until, by January 1, 1979, the Chinese troops
deployed along the Vietnamese border outnumbered the
Vietnamese troops four to one. War was imminent. It was
just a question of when it would break out.—

On the morning of January 4, over one hundred
thousand Vietnamese troops invaded Cambodia, and in a
matter of a few weeks they destroyed the military forces
of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime and forced its despotic
ruler, Pol Pot, and his minions to flee to neighboring
Thailand. The next day, NS A and the Australian SIGINT
agency, the Defence Signals Directorate (DSD), declared
a SIGINT alert, anticipating that the invasion would
almost certainly provoke a forceful Chinese response.—
NS A and DSD watched and listened as the Chinese
ultimately positioned 320,000 ground troops and 350
combat aircraft in the area adjacent to the Vietnamese
border by early February, as well as activating special
communications circuits connecting Beijing with a special
Chinese general staff command post at Duyun, in
southern China, one that had previously been activated
only in time’s of hostilities. On January 19, the CIA had
reported, “The manner of the buildup, its timing and the

mix of forces involved suggest offensive rather than
defensive preparations.” CIA and Australian intelligence
analysts in Washington and Canberra also believed that
outright war between the two countries was unlikely. So it
came as a shock to many policy makers in Washington
when seven Chinese armies surged across the border into
Vietnam at dawn on the morning of February 17.—

NSA’s performance during the run-up to the Chinese
offensive appears to have been a mixed bag, largely
because its overall collection efforts were hampered by
communications security measures taken by both the
Chinese and the Vietnamese militaries, such as extensive
use of landlines instead of radio.—

The Fall of Somoza and the Russian Brigade

in Cuba

On July 17, 1979, the longtime Nicaraguan dictator
Anastasio “Tacho” Somoza fled Nicaragua for Miami, but
was denied entry to the United States by President Carter.
Two days later, the Sandinista guerrillas who had battled
Somoza for a decade entered the Nicaraguan capital of
Managua and declared themselves the new rulers of the
country.

The Carter administration ordered intensified
intelligence coverage of the new regime because it was
supported by the Soviet Union and Cuba. In particular,
the White House wanted to know if the Sandinistas were

providing material or financial support to the Marxist
guerrillas operating in neighboring El Salvador, who
called themselves the Faribundo Marti National
Liberation Front (FMLN). As part of the “surge” effort,
Norman Klar’s G6 stepped up SIGINT reporting on
Nicaragua. U.S. Navy SIGINT reconnaissance aircraft
were deployed to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to monitor
developments in Nicaragua, and NSA’s listening posts in
the region were tasked with greater coverage of
Sandinista communications.—

By 1980, Klar’s cryptanalysts had solved and were
reading some high-level Nicaraguan diplomatic
communications traffic, but much less SIGINT was being
obtained from the Salvadoran FMLN guerrillas, who
communicated by radio far less often than their
Nicaraguan counterparts.—

Administration officials, particularly Zbigniew
Brzezinski, were convinced that the Sandinista victory in
Nicaragua and the growing power of FMLN in El
Salvador were being directed by Fidel Castro in Havana,
almost certainly with backing from the Soviet Union, so
NS A and the rest of the U.S. intelligence community were
ordered to intensify their reporting on Cuban military and
clandestine activity in Central America as well as Soviet
activities in Cuba itself Accordingly, in July and August
1979, NS A dramatically stepped up its SIGINT coverage
of Cuba.—

The U.S. intelligence community knew the Russians
had maintained a sizable military training mission in Cuba
since 1962, and the CIA reported to President Carter in
May 1979 that there were two thousand Soviet military
personnel serving as advisers to the Cuban military and
conducting SIGINT collection at a large listening post in
Lourdes, outside Havana. The report stated that,
according to some fragmentary SIGINT, Soviet pilots
were flying Cuban MiG fighters, but it made no mention
of Soviet combat troops being in Cuba.—

Based on a few intercepts, some CIA agent reports, and
some satellite imagery, during the period from April to
July 1979 Klar’s G6 office came to the conclusion that a
Soviet combat unit of brigade size was stationed in Cuba.
As former CIA director Stansfield Turner notes in his
memoirs, this “was a big inference from a sparse fact or
two.” Without the approval of the CIA, NSA published its
findings in the July 13 edition of the “Green Hornet,” as
NSA’s daily compendium of SIGINT “news,” the SIGINT
Summary, was widely known in Washington.—

The U.S. intelligence community, already concerned
about the Cuban military’s role in Angola and Ethiopia, as
well as the increasingly unstable political situation in
Central America, was upset by NSA’s action, and an
incensed Stan Turner informed the White House that
NSA’s actions constituted a direct violation of the
prohibition against its producing finished intelligence
reports for the president, a function reserved for the

CIA.S2

On July 19, the CIA and the rest of the U.S. intelligence
community issued a report that tentatively concluded “that
a Soviet ground forces brigade was /?o^^/Z?/ystationed in
Cuba, but that its size, location(s), and mission were
uncertain.” Then, triggered by an intercepted message, on
August 17, a CIA reconnaissance satellite passed over
Cuba and found the brigade, engaged in a routine military
exercise, which led to the CIA’s issuing a report on
September 18 (basically confirming the original NS A
missive) stating that a twenty-six-hundred-man Soviet
combat brigade was then in Cuba and had probably been
there since at least 1964, if not since the 1962 Cuban
Missile Crisis.—

When this leaked out to the press, it touched off a
political firestorm in Washington that almost destroyed
whatever gains had been made since the signing of SALT
I in 1972 in terms of improving U.S. -Soviet relations,
which was perhaps the reason the report was leaked in the
first place.—

The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan

Since there have been so few success stories in American
intelligence history, when one comes along, it is
worthwhile to examine it to see what went right. NSA’s
performance in the months prior to the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan in December 1979 was one of these rare

cases. Not only did all of the new high-tech intelligence-
collection sensors that NS A had purchased in the 1970s
work as intended, but the raw data that they collected was
processed in a timely fashion, which enabled Bobby Ray
Inman to boast that his agency had accurately predicted
that the Soviets would invade Afghanistan.—

As opposition to the Soviet- supported Afghan regime in
Kabul headed by President Nur Mohammed Taraki
mounted in late 1978 and early 1979, the Soviets
continued to increase their military presence in the
country, until it had grown to five Russian generals and
about a thousand military advisers.— A rebellion in the
northeastern Afghan city of Herat in mid-March 1979 in
which one hundred Russian military and civilian
personnel were killed was put down by Afghan troops
from Kandahar, but not before an estimated three
thousand to five thousand Afghans had died in the
fighting.—

At this point, satellite imagery and SIGINT detected
unusual activity by the two Soviet combat divisions
stationed along the border with Afghanistan.

The CIA initially regarded these units as engaged in
military exercises, but these “exercises” fit right into a
scenario for a Soviet invasion. On March 26- 27, SIGINT
detected a steady stream of Russian reinforcements and
heavy equipment being flown to Bagram airfield, north of
Kabul, and by June, the intelligence community estimated

that the airlift had brought in a total of twenty-five
hundred personnel, which included fifteen hundred
airborne troops and additional “advisers” as well as the
crews of a squadron of eight AN- 12 military transport
aircraft now based in-country. SIGINT revealed that the
Russians were also secretly setting up a command-and-
control communications network inside Afghanistan; it
would be used to direct the Soviet intervention in
December 1979.—

In the last week of August and the first weeks of
September, satellite imagery and SIGINT revealed
preparations for Soviet operations obviously aimed at
Afghanistan, including forward deployment of Soviet IL-
76 and AN- 12 military transport aircraft that were
normally based in the European portion of the USSR.—

So clear were all these indications that CIA director
Turner sent a Top Secret Umbra memo to the NSC on
September 14 warning, “The Soviet leaders may be on the
threshold of a decision to commit their own forces to
prevent the collapse of the Taraki regime and protect their
sizeable stake in Afghanistan. Small Soviet combat units
may have already arrived in the country.”—

On September 16, President Taraki was deposed in a
coup d’etat, and his pro-Moscow deputy, Hafizullah
Amin, took his place as the leader of Afghanistan.

Over the next two weeks, American reconnaissance
satellites and SIGINT picked up increased signs of Soviet

mobilization, including three divisions on the border and
the movement of many Soviet military transport aircraft
from their home bases to air bases near the barracks of
two elite airborne divisions, strongly suggesting an
invasion was imminent.—

On September 28, the CIA concluded that “in the event
of a breakdown of control in Kabul, the Soviets would be
likely to deploy one or more Soviet airborne divisions to
the Kabul vicinity to protect Soviet citizens as well as to
ensure the continuance of some pro-Soviet regime in the
capital.”— Then, in October, SIGINT detected the call-up
of thousands of Soviet reservists in the Central Asian
republics.—

Throughout November and December, NS A monitored
and the CIA reported on virtually every move made by
Soviet forces. The CIA advised the White House on
December 19 that the Russians had perhaps as many as
three airborne battalions at Bagram, and NS A predicted
on December 22, three full days before the first Soviet
troops crossed the Soviet-Afghan border, that the
Russians would invade Afghanistan within the next
seventy-two hours.—

NSA’s prediction was right on the money. The Russians
had an ominous Christmas present for Afghanistan, and
NS A unwrapped it. Late on Christmas Eve, Russian
linguists at the U.S. Air Force listening posts at Royal Air
Force Chicksands, north of London, and San Vito dei

Normanni Air Station, in southern Italy, detected the
takeoff from air bases in the western USSR of the first of
317 Soviet military transport flights carrying elements of
two Russian airborne divisions and heading for
Afghanistan; on Christmas morning, the CIA issued a
final intelligence report saying that the Soviets had
prepared for a massive intervention and might “have
started to move into that country in force today.” SIGINT
indicated that a large force of Soviet paratroopers was
headed for Afghanistan — and then, at six p.m. Kabul
time, it ascertained that the first of the Soviet IL-76 and
AN-22 military transport aircraft had touched down at
Bagram Air Base and the Kabul airport carrying the first
elements of the 103rd Guards Airborne Division and an in
dependent parachute regiment. Three days later, the first
of twenty-five thousand troops of Lieutenant General
Yuri Vladimirovich Tukharinov’s Fortieth Army began
crossing the Soviet- Afghan border.—

The studies done after the Afghan invasion all
characterized the performance of the U.S. intelligence
community as an “intelligence success story.”— NSA’s
newfound access to high-level Soviet communications
enabled the agency to accurately monitor and report
quickly on virtually every key facet of the Soviet
military’s activities. As we shall see in the next chapter,
Afghanistan may have been the “high water mark” for
NSA.i^.

Postscript

By the end of the 1970s, NS A had been largely rebuilt
thanks to the efforts of Lew Allen and Bobby Ray Inman.
Despite the dramatic cuts in its size, the agency remained,
as a former senior NS A official, Eugene Becker, put it, “a
several billion dollar a year corporation, with thousands
of people operating a global system.”— It had, thanks to
a new generation of spy satellites and other technical
sensors, once again gained access to high-level Soviet
communications. It did not take long before NS A was
producing reliable intelligence on what was going on
behind the iron curtain. According to a declassified NS A
history, “even with decreased money, cryptology was
yielding the best information that it had produced since
World War 11.”^^

CHAPTER 1 0

Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano

N S A During the Reagan and Bush
Administrations

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair! ”
^PERCY BYSSHE SHELLY, ’’OZYMANDIAS”

General Lincoln Faurer: April 1981— April

1985

On April 1, 1981, Admiral Bobby Inman became the
deputy director of the CIA. He was replaced at the helm
of NS A by Lieutenant General Lincoln Laurer of the U.S.
Air Force. A 1950 graduate of West Point, Faurer had a
resume filled with intelligence experience, including DIA
vice director for production and director of intelligence of
U.S. European Command in West Germany .-
Amiable and easy to get along with. Line Faurer seems
to have been liked by virtually everyone, including his
predecessor and six former senior NS A officials

interviewed for this book, who felt he was a man to whom
you could take problems without fear of recrimination. He
was fortunate to have as his deputy Ann Caracristi, an
extremely capable NS A cryptanalyst, who served as
deputy director of NS A from April 1, 1980, to July 31,
1982. Caracristi’ s successor, Robert Rich, who served
from August 1, 1982, to July 1986, was a Far East expert.
Caracristi and Rich handled internal management while
Faurer focused on NSA’s relations with Washington and
foreign collaborating agencies.-
Faurer’s four years at NS A were tumultuous. Shortly
after President Ronald Reagan took office, Faurer
persuaded Congress to allocate a huge amount of funding
for a dramatic expansion of NSA’s workforce, which
grew by 27 percent, to twenty-three thousand personnel,
between 1981 and 1985; the agency was forced to lease
space in nearby office buildings to temporarily house the
staff overflow. In 1982, Congress funded two new large
buildings adjacent to NS A headquarters. Operations 2 A
and 2B, and NS A expanded its mission to include
operations security and computer security.-
When Faurer became director, 58 percent of the
agency’s resources were devoted to covering the Soviet
Union and its Eastern European allies. The remainder was
dedicated to some twenty “hard targef’ countries,
including China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Nicaragua,
El Salvador, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iran, Iraq, and Libya.
But within the first months of his tenure, NSA’s SIGINT

operations took on new directions as innovative high-tech
collection systems came online — while new crises erupted
and targets of opportunity presented themselves.-

The Gulf of Sidra

In July 1981, President Reagan ordered the U.S. Navy to
conduct a naval exercise in the Gulf of Sidra, which Libya
claimed as its territorial waters but which all other nations
held to be international waters. The CIA warned the
White House and the Pentagon, “The Libyan Government
is likely to view the exercise as a conspiracy directed
against it. The possibility of a hostile tactical reaction
resulting in a skirmish is real. Even without such a
skirmish, the Libyan Government may view the
penetration of its claimed waters and airspace as ‘an
incident’ and that Syrian pilots operating Libyan MiG
fighters at Benina Air Base were the most likely to attack
U.S. aircraft if the Libyans chose to initiate combat.

Despite the CIA’s warning, the exercise proceeded as
planned, and on August 19 a Libyan SU-22 Fitter fighter
fired an air-to-air missile at two U.S. Navy F-14 Tomcat
fighters from the aircraft carrier USS NimitzoYQV the Gulf
of Sidra. The missile missed its target, but the Tomcats
shot down the Libyan jet. U.S. Navy radio intercept
operators on a nearby SIGINT EA-3B aircraft and aboard
the destroyer USS Caro^monitored all of the radio traffic
of the Libyan fighter pilot during the engagement, which

showed that the Libyans had deliberately sought a fight
with the American planes. -

Unbeknownst to Libyan leader Colonel Muammar
Qaddafi, the cryptanalysts in NSA’s G Group had for
years been able to read the most sensitive Libyan
diplomatic and intelligence ciphers. The agency was also
listening to all of Qaddafi ’s telephone calls, which proved
to be an important source of intelligence about the Libyan
leader’s intentions. A day or two after the Gulf of Sidra
shootdown, an American listening post intercepted a
phone call from an enraged Qaddafi to Ethiopian leader
Mengistu Haile Mariam, in which Qaddafi swore that he
would kill President Reagan to avenge the insult. As a
result of this warning, the U.S. Secret Service increased
the level of its protection of President Reagan, but no
tangible threat surfaced and the security alert was called
off in December 1981.-

The CENTAM Conundrum

In August 1981, the Reagan administration began to
publicly assert that the United States now had firm
intelligence showing that Nicaragua’s Sandinista
government had intensified its covert arms supply to the
FMLN guerrillas inside El Salvador. NS A had been
reading Nicaragua’s diplomatic codes for months, as well
as intercepting most of the radio traffic between Managua
and the rebels in El Salvador. At the request of the White

House, in November the agency increased its SIGINT
coverage of the Sandinista regime and began tracking the
movements of the FMLN guerrilla units, who were now
powerful enough to threaten the stability of the newly
elected Salvadoran government of Jose Napoleon Duarte.-
NSA threw a vast amount of SIGINT collection
resources at the FMLN guerrillas. In July 1981, huge RC-
135 reconnaissance aircraft flying from Offiitt Air Force
Base in Nebraska began conducting SIGINT collection
missions off the coast of El Salvador, followed by other
airborne intercept operations through October, enabling
U.S. intelligence to monitor FMLN activities and share
the take with the Salvadoran military. If the locations of
FMLN radio transmitters were triangulated, U.S. Air
Force AC- 130 gunships were called in from Panama to
destroy the guerrilla bases, all of which was done in
complete secrecy. It was a very serious and very secret
war that was being fought in El Salvador.-
In December, the U.S. Navy began stationing a
SIGINT-equipped destroyer off the coast of El Salvador
as part of Jittery Prop, an operation to intercept radio
traffic related to arms shipments and to pinpoint the
locations of Nicaraguan military and Salvadoran guerrilla
radio transmitters. When the U.S. press broke the story
about Jittery Prop in February 1982, the FMLN guerrillas
switched radio frequencies, and NS A temporarily lost its
ability to listen to the transmitters, but by the early
summer of 1982 Jittery Prop ships had restored their

SIGINT coverage of the Nicaraguan and Salvadoran
guerilla radio nets.—

Virtually all of the best evidence available was coming
from SIGINT, including NSA’s almost daily intercepts
containing status reports from almost all FMLN units
operating inside El Salvador. But the Reagan
administration chose not to make the evidence provided
by the intercepts public, apparently to avoid
compromising the source.—

Beginning in late 1983, however, NSA’s access began
to drop off dramatically as the Nicaraguan regime began
to tighten up its communications security. New Russian-
made cipher machines were put into use on all major
Nicaraguan communications circuits, and communication
between Managua and the FMLN was converted to
unbreakable one-time pad systems.—

KAL 007

At three twenty-six a.m. (local time) on September 1,
1983, Major Gennadiy Nikolayevich Osipovich, a veteran
SU-15 fighter pilot assigned to the Soviet 777th Fighter
Aviation Regiment at Dolinsk-Sokol Air Base on
Sakhalin Island, fired two AA-3 Anab missiles at a
Korean Airlines Boeing 747 as it was exiting Soviet
airspace west of the island. The airliner, whose flight
number was KAL 007, was flying from New York to
Seoul via Anchorage. Both of Osipovich’s missiles hit the

passenger aircraft. For the next twelve minutes, the 141
spiraled downward, before impacting on the water below.
All 269 passengers and crew were killed, including U.S.
congressman Lawrence “Larry” McDonald.—

U.S. Air Force radio intercept operators working the
night shift at the NS A listening post at Misawa, Japan,
had monitored the entire sequence of events from the
moment the Korean airliner had veered off course and
entered Soviet airspace over the Kamchatka Peninsula.
An hour before KAL 007 was shot down, the intercept
operators at Misawa had noted an increased volume of
Soviet air defense radio transmissions as the Korean
airliner crossed Kamchatka. Russian radar tracking
activity throughout the Far East increased dramatically,
and several MiG fighters were detected in intercepts
taking off from Petropavlovsk-Yelizovo Air Base on
Kamchatka. SIGINT analysts in the Far East concluded at
the time that in all likelihood the activity was part of an
unannounced air defense exercise.—

As the 747 crossed Sakhalin Island, unaware of the
chaos going on around it, a highly classified thirty-man
NS A radio intercept facility at Wakkanai on the
northernmost tip of the Japanese island of Hokkaido,
called Project Clef, began intercepting, at two fifty-six
a.m. (thirty minutes before the shootdown took place),
highly unusual radio transmissions from four Russian
fighter interceptors who appeared to be conducting live
intercept operations just across the La Perouse Strait

(between Sakhalin Island and Hokkaido) against an
unknown target. One of the intercept operators at
Wakkanai happened to be sitting on the air-to-ground
radio frequency of Major Osipovich’s fighter regiment at
Dolinsk-Sokol, which proved to be providential because
as he sat listening to the Russian fighter pilot’s radio
transmissions he heard the fateful transmissions at three
twenty-six a.m. indicating that Osipovich had fired his
missiles (“I have executed the launch”), followed two
seconds later by the Russian fighter pilot reporting to his
ground controller that “the target is destroyed.” It was this
tape recording that was to figure so highly in the days and
weeks that followed.—

When the first CRITIC report from Misawa hit
Washington early on the morning of September 1, it set
into motion a chain of events that would have severe
repercussions for U.S. -Soviet relations. Secretary of State
George Shultz pushed hard to get NS A and the rest of the
U.S. intelligence community to agree to allow him to
release to the public the tape-recorded intercept of Major
Osipovich shooting down the airliner, later telling an
interviewer, “It’s a pretty chilling tape. It seemed to me
that was a critical thing to get out. With the President’s
support I managed to get the intelligence people to release
it. It was hard because they didn’t want to release it.”—

At ten forty-five a.m. (Washington time), Shultz walked
to the podium in the Press Briefing Room at the State
Department and laid out the facts about the shootdown.

such as they were known at the time. But in doing so, he
revealed a great deal about NSA’s role in the affair,
something which the astute reporters in Washington
quickly picked up on, to the intense chagrin of senior
agency officials at Fort Meade.—

But it turned out that in their rush to pillory the Soviets,
much of what Shultz told the press about the incident
turned out to be flat-out wrong. NS A analysts were still
trying to put together a complete and accurate translation
at the same time the Reagan administration was releasing
selected extracts from the intercepts to buttress their case
that the Soviets had committed an act of mass murder. It
was not until late on the afternoon on September 1 that
NS A completed its “scrub” of the intercept tapes and
found that, according to former CIA deputy director for
intelligence Robert M. Gates, “the story might be a little
more complicated.” The new NSA-produced translation
showed that the Russians thought they were tracking an
American RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft, not a Boeing
747 airliner, and that Major Osipovich, the SU-15 pilot
who fired the fatal missiles, never identified the aircraft as
a civilian airliner, believing that the “bogey” he was
trailing was actually an American military aircraft. All of
this information ended up in the next day’s edition of the
CIA’s President’s Daily Brief, as well as in a briefing for
the National Security Council by CIA director William
Casey.—

Everyone is familiar with the age-old adage “Never let

the facts get in the way of a good story.” That is exactly
what Reagan administration officials did. On September
5, President Reagan went on national television and
delivered a harsh and uncompromising attack on
Moscow’s actions, describing the KAL 007 shootdown as
a “crime against humanity.” He played carefully selected
extracts of the NS A intercepts, then forcefully argued that
the Russian fighter pilot must have known that he was
shooting down a civilian airliner despite the fact that he
had been told four days earlier that the tapes indicated
otherwise. The next day, the U.S. ambassador to the
United Nations, Jeane Kirkpatrick, played three carefully
selected extracts from the NS A tapes before a standing-
room-only session of the U.N. Security Council, again
using the occasion to accuse the Soviets of having
committed mass murder.—

The crux of the problem was that Reagan’s and
Kirkpatrick’s presentations were only half true. Gates
later admitted that much of what they had said was not
entirely factual, writing in his memoirs that “the
administration’s rhetoric outran the facts known to it.”—
Alvin Snyder, the former head of television for the U.S.
Information Agency, whose staff was given the job of
producing the slick audio-video presentation given by
Ambassador Kirkpatrick at the United Nations, later
admitted that he was given only selected portions of the
NS A intercept tapes. He only learned later that the
complete, unabridged version of the NS A intercept tape

showed that the Russians had tried to warn the Korean
airliner by firing tracer bullets in front of the aircraft, but
the Korean pilots never saw them.—

The fact that the Reagan administration played “fast and
loose” with the NS A intelligence product only became
known years later. According to Raymond Garthoff, a
respected Soviet affairs analyst with the Brookings
Institute in Washington,

Secretary Shultz’s statement had been made as soon
as American intelligence had ascertained beyond any
doubt that the airplane had been shot down.
Unfortunately, many of the allegations about the
incident made by him, by President Reagan, and by
other administration spokesmen even days later were
based on unfounded assumptions or incorrect
information. It later became clear that, contrary to
the confident American charges, the Soviets had not
known that it was a civilian airliner and indeed had
believed (as shown in other taped interceptions not
played by the President) that it was an American
military reconnaissance aircraft. Moreover, the U.S.
government had information on the real situation
before these inaccurate charges were hastily made —
although at least in some cases not known by those
who made them . . . The facts were not important;
what was important was the opportunity to savage
the Soviet leaders.—

At Fort Meade, NS A officials were furious about how
their intelligence information was being abused. The
White House’s selective release of the most salacious of
the NS A material concerning the shootdown set off a
firestorm of criticism inside NS A. Among the most
vociferous of the critics was Walter Deeley, NSA’s
deputy director for communications security, who before
he died in 1989 said that “releasing the KAL material just
for propaganda purposes cost us sources and gained
nothing tangible in the long run.” Former NS A director
Admiral Bobby Ray Inman agreed that the release of the
tapes was counterproductive because it irretrievably broke
down the wall of secrecy that had long surrounded NSA’s
operations, but he understood why some NS A officials
chose to talk to reporters about the KAL incident because
“they were so offended by the way they thought that
material had been used for political purposes.”—

Arguably the most significant revelation coming out of
the KAL 007 shoot-down was the fact that the massive
Soviet national air defense system had not performed well
at all. Intercepts showed that the Soviet’s radar tracking
data had been inaccurate, and that the data had not been
transmitted in a timely manner from the radar stations to
the Russian air defense command centers in the Far East.
The intercepts also showed that Soviet fighter interceptors
did not respond quickly, repeatedly failing to intercept the
lumbering 747 airliner as it slowly traversed the

Kamchatka Peninsula and Sakhalin Island. The normally
staid and tightly disciplined Soviet command and control
system degenerated into something bordering on chaos.
Intercepted air-to-ground radio messages between
Osipovich and his ground controller on Sakhalin Island
revealed conflicting instructions being radioed from the
ground. According to a declassified CIA report, “The
pilot [Osipovich] was agitated and clearly indicated that
he considered this instruction to be belated. Tt should
have been earlier. How can I chase it? I’m already
alongside the target. ’

Lebanon

On August 25, 1982, U.S. Navy landing craft deposited
eight hundred marine combat troops on the beaches of
Beirut. Their mission was to supervise the evacuation of
PLO forces from Lebanon, along with military
contingents from France and Italy. The marines stayed
only sixteen days in Beirut, but were forced to return on
September 29 after President-elect Bashir Gemayel was
killed when a car bomb destroyed his headquarters in East
Beirut. In the days that followed, Israeli forces took
advantage of the chaos that ensued and captured most of
West Beirut. In East Beirut, Lebanese Christian militia
forces besieged and eventually captured the Sabra and
Shatila refugee camps, massacring hundreds of
Palestinians.

A truce was hastily worked out, and the Israeli forces
withdrew from Beirut. In order to protect a fragile cease-
fire between Druze and Shi’ite Muslim militias and the
Christian-dominated Lebanese army, the American and
European forces stayed in Lebanon. The militias soon
concluded that the U.S. forces were allied with the
Lebanese army, and soon the marines came under fire as
Muslim forces attacked the weakened Lebanese army
troops guarding Beirut.

The marines had SIGINT support from their own
Second Radio Battalion, which set up a listening post in
Yarze, a town located in the Christian-controlled zone
southeast of the city. During the next year and a half, the
marine SIGINT detachment monitored the command nets
of the various Palestinian factions around Beirut, as well
as the radio communications of the Shi’ite Amal and
Druze militias. On May 6, 1983, the marine SIGINT
operators at Yarze intercepted an order being sent to a
Druze artillery battery to shell the Beirut International
Airport, where U.S. Marine ground forces were deployed.
Fortunately, the artillery strike never took place, but the
marines at the airport were placed on a higher state of
alert because of the intercepts.—

But the fatal blow came from the Iranians, who had a
large presence in Lebanon that was actively planning and
financing attacks on American targets there. NS A was
routinely decoding the secret cables sent from Tehran to
Ali Akbar Mohtashami-Pur, the Irani an ambassador in

Damascus, Syria, in which they repeatedly urged him to
find ways to attack American targets in Lebanon. Most
ominous were NS A decrypts revealing that the radical
Shi’ite group Hezbollah in Lebanon routinely reported on
its activities to Mohtashami-Pur, and that some (but not
all) Hezbollah activities in Lebanon were directly
controlled by the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and
Security (MOIS) and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard
Corps in Tehran.—

NS A intercepts of Mohtashami-Pur’ s communications
traffic revealed that the Iranians were providing financial
and logistical support to a group of Shi’ite terrorists in the
Bekaa Valley. On April 18, 1983, a member of this group
drove a nondescript van next to the U.S. embassy in
Beirut and detonated a bomb consisting of two thousand
pounds of high explosives, killing sixty-three people,
including seventeen Americans. Among the casualties
were most of the staff of the embassy’s CIA station,
including the CIA’s top Middle East expert, Robert Ames,
and the CIA station chief, Kenneth Haas. Decrypted Irani
an diplomatic cables showed that Mohtashami-Pur had
been aware that an attack was being planned, that senior
Irani an intelligence officials in Tehran had approved the
attack, and that Tehran had transferred twenty-five
thousand dollars to the Iranian embassy in Damascus to
finance the operation. Other NS A intercepts showed that
the Iranian government had sent one million dollars to the
embassy in Damascus, which was used to buy the

explosives used in the car bomb attack.—

Five months later, on September 24, an NS A listening
post in the Middle East intercepted a message from the
headquarters of MOIS in Tehran to Mohtashami-Pur in
Damascus, directing the ambassador to “contact Hussein
Musawi, the leader of the terrorist group Islamic Amal,
and to instruct him ... ‘to take a spectacular action
against the United States Marines.’ ” The intercept did
not, however, provide any specifics about the time and
place of the planned attack. On September 27, NS A sent
an urgent warning message to the White House, the CIA
stations in Beirut and Damascus, and the Second Marine
Radio Battalion SIGINT detachment in Lebanon,
indicating that a terrorist attack might be mounted against
the United States in the near future. —

But amazingly, neither the Pentagon nor the commander
of the U.S. Marine contingent in Beirut, Colonel Timothy
Geraghty, seems to have reacted to this warning, which
may well have gotten lost in the maze of the U.S.
military’s bureaucracy. We do know that Geraghty did
not put his forces on alert, nor did he or any of his
subordinate commanders take any additional mea-sures to
ensure the safety of their troops. Senior officials at the
Pentagon also did nothing to prevent the attack. Less than
a month later, the disaster that NS A had warned was
coming finally came to pass.—

At six twenty- two a.m. on October 23, a terrorist named

Ismalal Ascari drove a yellow Mercedes-Benz truck laden
with explosives into the marine barracks complex at the
Beirut International Airport and detonated it. The
resulting explosion was massive, the equivalent of twenty
thousand pounds of TNT detonating, giving it the
sorrowful distinction of being the largest nonnuclear
explosion in history. The casualty toll was appalling.
When the body count was finally tallied, 241 marines and
sailors were dead and 60 more badly wounded. Twenty
seconds after the first attack, a second suicide bomber
attempted to drive a truck laden with explosives into the
nearby headquarters of the French peacekeeping force in
Beirut. Although alert French sentries killed the driver,
the bomb detonated, killing 58 French soldiers.—

After the bombing of the marine barracks, NS A
unleashed the full range of its SIGINT assets on the
Muslim militias now openly firing on the marine positions
at the airport. Air force and navy SIGINT aircraft orbited
over the Mediterranean twenty-four hours a day
intercepting Druze, Shi’ite, and Syrian military radio
traffic. SIGINT from the marine detachment at Bayt Miri
began to be used for offensive purposes. Intercepts and
direction-finding data from the Second Radio Battalion
detachment were used to direct marine artillery and naval
gunfire to the locations of artillery batteries and their
firing-direction centers, manned by Druze gunners
belonging to Walid Jumblatf s Progressive Socialist Party
(PSP), in the hills above Beirut.—

Interviews with marine SIGINTers who served in
Lebanon between 1982 and 1984 reveal that the problems
experienced by the SIGINT detachment from the Second
Radio Battalion in Beirut were huge. Not only had NS A
not briefed the personnel of the marine SIGINT
detachment about the signals environment in Lebanon
before they deployed to Beirut, but the agency also did
not provide them with any working aids or computerized
databases related to the targets they were being tasked
with copying. And once they arrived in Lebanon, they
discovered that they did not have any access to NSA’s
databases, nor were they given copies of reports detailing
what NS A was learning about the situation in Lebanon
from its other SIGINT sources. But the biggest shock was
the discovery, once they got to Beirut, that they were not
properly equipped to conduct SIGINT operations in the
low- tech signals environment that was Beirut. A former
marine SIGINT operator stationed in Lebanon recalled,
“We were trained and equipped to intercept conventional
Soviet military radio communications, not the walkie-
talkies used by the Shi’ites and Druze in the foothills
overlooking our base . . . Initially we couldn’t hear shit.”
The Shi’ite and Druze militiamen who were their
principal targets did not use fixed radio frequencies or
regular call signs, or follow standardized radio
procedures, which made monitoring their communications
extremely difficult. The differing Arabic dialects spoken
by the militiamen were also extremely hard for the

school-trained marine intercept operators to understand,
as was the West Beirut street slang the militiamen used.
Taken together, this meant that the marine radio intercept
operators and analysts had to improvise (oftentimes under
fire) to do their job. A former marine SIGINT detachment
commander recalled, ‘Tt was a hell of a way to learn your
job, but that’s what Marines are good at. Adapt and
improvise. I just wish we didn’t have to. So many lives
were lost because we weren’t prepared for the enemy that
we faced.”—

General Odom at NSA: April 1985— August

1988

NSA’s increasingly close relations with the White House
infuriated Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and
his deputy, William Taft IV, who wanted to reestablish
Defense Department control over the agency, which some
Pentagon officials had begun to view as a “rogue
elephant.” This battle for control of NSA came to a head
when agency director Faurer and Taft disagreed over
NSA’s role as national manager for telephone and
computer security pursuant to National Security Decision
Directive 145, particularly draft provisions that would
have placed NSA under the authority of the NSC, not the
Defense Department. Although NSA won this battle, the
worst was yet to come. During budget negotiations before
the Defense Resources Board in late 1984, Faurer hotly

disputed a plan by the Defense Department to cut the part
of NSA’s funding earmarked for a large computer
complex called the Supercomputing Research Center.
Faurer appealed the board’s decision in a memorandum to
Secretary Weinberger and sent copies of the memo to
several NS A allies at the White House. When Taft learned
of this end run, he called Faurer into his office on January
3, 1985, for a meeting that was subsequently described as
heated and acrimonious. Faurer was brusquely informed
that he was through as NS A director. CIA director
William Casey tried to intervene on his behalf, but to no
avail. Faurer submitted his letter of resignation on March
19 and left NS A on April 1.—

On April 19, President Reagan nominated Lieutenant
General William Odom, of the U.S. Army, to succeed
Faurer as NS A director. Odom became NSA’s eleventh
director on May 8, the first army officer to head the
agency since Lieutenant General Marshall Carter in
1969.24

Bom in Cookeville, Tennessee, on June 23, 1932,
Odom grew up in the nearby tiny farming community of
Cross ville, where his father ran an agricultural research
station for the University of Tennessee. Odom graduated
from West Point in 1954, and after several years as a
platoon and company commander he obtained a master’s
degree in Russian studies from Columbia University, in
1962. From this point onward, most of Odom’s career
was spent in either academia or intelligence. He taught at

West Point from 1966 to 1969, then earned a Ph.D. in
political science from Columbia in 1970. Following
graduation, he served a tour in Vietnam with the CIA-led
pacification organization Civil Operations and Rural
Development Support, then went to Moscow as the
assistant military attache, a position he held from April
1972 to June 1974. Following an assignment teaching
political science at West Point, Odom served on the NSC
as the military assistant to Jimmy Carter’s national
security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, from 1977 to
1981, where he handled matters relating to crisis
management, nuclear targeting, civil defense, terrorism,
and third world military planning. His hard-line attitude
toward the Soviet Union earned him the sobriquet Zbig’s
Super-hawk during his tour in the White House. From
November 1981 to April 1985, Odom served as the
army’s assistant chief of staff for intelligence, where he
promoted technical intelligence collection systems. Odom
was also instrumental in saving the army’s controversial
clandestine intelligence unit, the Intelligence Support
Activity, from extinction.—

Washington Po^/journalist Bob Woodward described
Odom, perhaps politely, as “an intense, thin, stony man.”
Former NS A officials frequently used the words
“acerbic,” “fractious,” “combative,” and “hardheaded” in
interviews to describe his personality, along with more
colorful descriptions that cannot be printed here.—

Given these descriptions, it should come as no surprise

that Odom’s tenure as NS A director, from 1985 to 1988,
was not a happy one. In a matter of months, he dismantled
virtually all of the internal reform mechanisms put in
place by former director Bobby Ray Inman, including the
system designed to identify and promote talented
managers. Commenting on this, Inman said, “I think
much of it [the reform initiatives] died with Bill Odom,
who had his strong likes and dislikes and zero interest in
systems.”—

A polarizing figure, Odom had an autocratic style that
instantly put him at odds with many of NSA’s senior
civilian officials. There were resignations by key senior
personnel and a minirevolt in 1988 after Odom’s censure
and demotion of the number- three man in NSA’s
Communications Security Organization, John
Wobensmith, for assisting Lieutenant Colonel Oliver
North, which was regarded as making Wobensmith the
scapegoat for the agency’s involvement in North’s Iran-
Contra scheme.— By mid- 1988, many of Inman’s
proteges were fighting what they regarded as a purge of
their ranks by Odom and his supporters. Things got so
bad that Inman actually testified against Odom’s actions
at a personnel hearing at Fort Meade.—

Odom made few friends in Washington and plenty of
enemies because of his lobbying to increase the
independence and power of NS A at the expense of the
CIA and other intelligence agencies, which were already

concerned about the burgeoning power of NS A. When
CIA director Casey was told that Odom had been spotted
on Capitol Hill leaving the office of a senator on the
intelligence committee, Casey erupted in anger, telling
one of his deputies, “This S.O.B. is incredible!”—

The Spy Satellites

NSA’s SIGINT effort against the USSR during the 1980s
was radically improved by a constellation of four new spy
satellites parked in geosynchronous orbit twenty-two
thousand miles above the earth called Vortex (previously
known as Chalet), which was designed to suck up a huge
amount of Russian communications traffic. Vortex was
created in the early 1970s to replace the older Canyon as
NSA’s primary means of intercepting vast quantities of
telephone traffic deep inside the Soviet Union. Sporting a
huge parabolic receiving antenna, the eleven-foot long,
eight-foot wide, 3,087-pound Vortex satellites were
equipped with state-of-the-art intercept receivers that had
the capacity to simultaneously intercept over eleven
thousand telephone calls and faxes carried on Soviet
microwave radio-relay circuits; the satellites then chose
which signals to beam back to NSA-operated mission
ground stations at Men with Hill, in northern England,
and Bad Aibling, in West Germany, in near real time
based on a sophisticated “watch lisf’ maintained by its
onboard computers.—

The quantity and quality of intelligence coming from
the Vortex satellites was impressive. Vortex intercepted to
great effect the operational and tactical radio traffic of
Soviet military forces deep inside Afghanistan throughout
the 1980s, and it monitored the radio circuits used by
Russian SS-20 mobile intermediate-range ballistic missile
firing units and SS-24 mobile ICBM batteries to
communicate with their operating bases. The best
intelligence coverage of the April 1986 disaster at the
Russian Chernobyl nuclear reactor available to the U.S.
intelligence community came from intercepts supplied by
Vortex satellites, which listened in on the Russian
government’s reaction to the disaster, including the
telephone traffic of the Soviet general staff and the KGB.
Two years later, in May 1988, a Vortex satellite picked up
radio traffic indicating that a huge explosion had taken
place at a Russian fuel propellant plant at Pavlograd,
which made fuel components for Soviet ICBMs.—

Ronald Pelton

Arguably the worst damage that has ever been inflicted on
NS A was not done by an enterprising journalist or a
White House official leaking information. Rather, this
dubious honor is held by a former NS A official named
Ronald Pelton, who had worked in NSA’s A Group,
which was responsible for all SIGINT operations against
the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, for his entire career.

As chief of a key staff unit within A Group, Pelton had
complete access to the details of all the unit’s sensitive
compartmented programs.

In July 1979, Pelton was forced to resign from NSA
after filing for bankruptcy three months earlier. Desperate
for money, on January 15, 1980, Pelton got in touch with
the Russian embassy in Washington, and in the months
that followed, he sold them, for a paltry thirty-five
thousand dollars, a number of Top Secret Codeword
documents and anything else he could remember. For the
Soviets this was pure gold, and a bargain at that.—

The damage that Pelton did was massive. He
compromised the joint NSA- U.S. Navy undersea-cable
tapping operation in the Sea of Okhotsk called Ivy Bells,
which was producing vast amounts of enormously
valuable, unencrypted, and incredibly detailed intelligence
about the Soviet Pacific Fleet, information that might give
the United States a clear, immediate warning of a Soviet
attack. In 1981, a Soviet navy salvage ship lifted the Ivy
Bells pod off the seafloor and took it to Moscow to be
studied by Soviet electronics experts. It now resides in a
forlorn comer of the museum of the Russian security
service in the Lubyanka, in downtown Moscow.—

Even worse, Pelton betrayed virtually every sensitive
SIGINT operation that NSA and Britain’s GCHQ were
then conducting against the Soviet Union, including the
seven most highly classified compartmented intelligence
operations that A Group was then engaged in. The

programs were so sensitive that Charles Lord, the NS A
deputy director of operations at the time, called them the
“Holiest of Holies.” He told the Russians about the ability
of NSA’s Vortex SIGINT satellites to intercept sensitive
communications deep inside the USSR that were being
carried by microwave radio-relay systems. Felton also
revealed the full extent of the intelligence being collected
by the joint NSA-CIA Broadside listening post in the U.S.
embassy in Moscow. Within months of Felton being
debriefed in Vienna, the Soviets intensified their jamming
of the frequencies being monitored by the Moscow
embassy listening post, and the intelligence “take”
coming out of Broadside fell to practically nothing. Felton
also told the Russians about virtually every Russian
cipher machine that NSA’s cryptanalysts in A Group had
managed to crack in the late 1970s. NS A analysts had
wondered why at the height of the Folish crisis in 1981
they had inexplicably lost their ability to exploit key
Soviet and Folish communications systems, which had
suddenly gone silent without warning. Felton also told the
Russians about a joint CIA-NSA operation wherein CIA
operatives placed fake tree stumps containing
sophisticated electronic eavesdropping devices near
Soviet military installations around Moscow. The data
intercepted by these devices was either relayed
electronically to the U.S. embassy or sent via burst
transmission to the United States via communication
satellites.—

In December 1985, Pelton was arrested and charged in
federal court in Baltimore, with six counts of passing
classified information to the Soviet Union. After a brief
trial, in June 1986 Pelton was found guilty and sentenced
to three concurrent life terms in prison.—

Gulf of Sidra II and La Belle Diseo

The year 1986 was one of dangerous confrontation
between Muammar Qaddafi and the Reagan
administration. In January, the U.S. Sixth Fleet’s Freedom
of Navigation exercises off the Libyan coast (designated
Operation Attain Document) gave NS A an opportunity to
monitor the reactions of Libyan MiG-23 and MiG-25
fighters. On January 13, two MiG-25s attempted to
intercept a U.S. Navy EA-3 SIGINT reconnaissance
aircraft flying over international waters southwest of
Sicily. The Libyan aircraft retreated when a pair of navy
F-18 fighters from the aircraft carrier USS Coral
SeamiYQd on the scene.—

A month later, on February 28, the Joint Chiefs of Staff
requested NS A SIGINT support for enlarged navy
exercises in the Gulf of Sidra, a move sure to produce a
violent Libyan reaction. Pursuant to the request, NS A
quickly reallocated otherwise dedicated resources for
monitoring Libyan military communications traffic,
among them one of the Vortex SIGINT satellites, a
number of navy warships with embarked SIGINT

intercept detachments, and a number of air force and navy
SIGINT reconnaissance aircraft. In March, the increased
tempo of American reconnaissance flights triggered an
attempted intercept by two Libyan MiG-25 s of a navy
EA-3B reconnaissance aircraft flying from the aircraft
carrier USS SaratogallO miles north of Tripoli. No shots
were fired, but it became clear that the Libyans were
serious about stopping American eavesdropping

• • • AQ

activities.—

Since NS A could read the Libyan cipher systems, the
agency knew virtually everything worth knowing about
the capabilities and locations of Libyan air and ground
units, including the Libyan air defense system’s radar and
fire control systems. In early 1986, NSA learned that
Qaddafi had ordered his tiny navy out onto the high seas
to avoid being destroyed in port and had told his air force
to increase the number of sorties being flown. But Libyan
warships were prone to mechanical difficulties caused by
poor maintenance, their crews were hindered by a lack of
blue-water experience, and there were also operational
difficulties, including an inability to replenish and refuel
ships at sea. And the Libyan air force, NSA discovered,
had serious problems operating its complex Russian-made
fighters. Nevertheless, NSA monitored more than two
hundred sorties by Libyan fighter aircraft trying to engage
their more capable U.S. Navy counterparts over the Gulf
of Sidra. An air force radio intercept operator at Iraklion,
Crete, later recalled that “a fistfight with Qaddafi was

coming. It was just a matter of when and where.”—

On March 23, a Libyan SA-5 SAM battery launched
four missiles at U.S. Navy aircraft that had deliberately
flown across Qaddafi’s so-called Line of Death over the
Gulf of Sidra. The missile launch was detected by a U.S.
Air Force RC-135 Burning Wind reconnaissance aircraft,
which warned the navy fighters in time for them to do
evasive maneuvers. The next day, U.S. Navy fighter-
bombers destroyed the Libyan SAM battery and two
Libyan guided missile patrol boats.—

Qaddafi demanded retaliation for the humiliation visited
on his forces. On March 25, an NS A listening post
intercepted a three-line telex message from the head of the
Libyan Intelligence Service in Tripoli to eight Libyan
embassies (called “People’s Bureaus”) in Europe,
including East Berlin, instructing them to target places in
which American servicemen congregated. An intercepted
March 23 message from Tripoli to the People’s Bureau in
East Berlin had demanded an attack “with as many
victims as possible.” This was followed by an intercepted
message from East Berlin reporting that “an operation
would be undertaken shortly and that Libyan officials
would be pleased with it.”

At one forty-nine a.m. on April 5, a bomb went off
inside La Belle discotheque in West Berlin, killing two
American servicemen and a Turkish woman and
wounding 230 others. Shortly after, an intercepted
message from Libya’s East Berlin outpost reported that

“the operation had been successfully completed, and that
it would not be traceable to the Libyan diplomatic post in
East Berlin.” According to the files of the former East
German secret service, the intercepted message stated,
“At 1:30 this morning one of the acts was carried out with
success, without leaving a trace behind.”—

On the evening of April 7, President Reagan went on
national tele vision to announce that the U.S. government
had incontrovertible evidence proving that the Libyan
government was behind the La Belle Disco bombing. The
Libyans immediately changed all of their codes and
ciphers and purchased a new cipher machine from a Swiss
company, negating many of NS A’ s gains made since the
first Libyan cipher systems were solved in 1979.—

On April 14, eighteen U.S. Air Force F-111 fighter-
bombers took off from air bases in En gland for a twenty-
four-hundred-mile flight to bomb targets in Libya. The
American air strikes hit selected targets in Tripoli and
Benghazi, killing at least fifteen people, including
Qaddafi’s adopted daughter, and wounding more than one
hundred others. But they did not succeed in killing
Qaddafi.—

Admiral William Studeman, who would become
director of NS A two years later, recalled that the entire
intelligence community was scooped by CNN: “When we
bombed Libya ... we got more bomb damage
assessments and a sense of what was going on inside

Tripoli around those targets listening to the CNN guy
talking on the balcony of a hotel in Tripoli than we did
from all the electronic surveillance devices that we had
focused on the problem.”—

Admiral William Studeman: August 1988—

January 1992

On August 1, 1988, General Odom retired from the
military after the Joint Chiefs of Staff unanimously
recommended against extending his three-year tour of
duty as director of NS A. Despite support from the
Pentagon’s number-two man, William Taft, Odom’s
abrasive personality and autocratic style had rubbed too
many people in the Defense Department and the
intelligence community the wrong way.—

Odom was replaced by career naval intelligence officer
Rear Admiral William Studeman. Bill Studeman was born
in Brownsville, Texas, on January 16, 1940, the son of an
American aviation pioneer who had flown during World
War I and helped build Pan American Airways. He
graduated from the University of the South in Sewanee,
Tennessee, in 1962 with a B.A. in history, then joined the
navy to become a pilot. Studeman’ s subsequent advance
through the navy’s ranks was meteoric, taking him from
ensign to rear admiral in only twenty years. His big break
came when he was assigned to be the executive assistant
to the director of the Office of Naval Intelligence, Rear

Admiral Bobby Ray Inman. Inman took Studeman under
his wing and helped guide him through the ranks of naval
intelligence. In September 1985, he became the fifty-third
director of ONI and remained there until his assignment
as director of NS A.—

Quiet and thoughtful, during his career in the navy
Studeman had earned a reputation for blunt honesty and
candor that had occasionally bruised some of his
colleagues in naval intelligence, some of whom derisively
referred to him as “the Boy Scout.” It had fallen to
Studeman, as director of ONI, to deal with the fallout of
the Walker- Whitworth spy ring, which he had handled
with aplomb despite the fact that it was arguably the worst
intelligence disaster in U.S. history before the 2002 Iraqi
weapons of mass destruction scandal.—

He was pleasantly surprised to get the nod to head NS A.
Former agency officials who served under him believe
that Studeman ’s three-year tenure there is under
appreciated. He is credited with “righting the ship” after
Odom’s bruising and contentious tenure, restoring the
shaken morale at the agency, and renewing NSA’s sense
of purpose and mission at a time when it needed it most.—

And most important, the agency was regarded as far
more effective by its consumers after scoring some
important intelligence coups, such as information
concerning the Chinese military’s bloody suppression of
the democracy movement in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square

in June 1989. Intercepts collected by NSA detailed the
reluctance of the commander of the Chinese Thirty-eighth
Army in Beijing to attack the student protesters camped
out in the square. When the Thirty-eighth Army would
not move, SIGINT tracked the Chinese Twenty- seventh
Army and the elite parachute divisions of the Fifteenth
Air Army being brought into Beijing to put down the
student-led movement. The intercepts confirmed that units
of the Twenty- seventh and Thirty-eighth Armies had
clashed with each other and that casualties had been
sustained by both forces. The clandestine listening posts
inside the American, British, Australian, and Canadian
embassies also showed that the Chinese army had
deployed forces around the Zhongmanhai Leadership
Compound in Beijing to protect the Chinese Politburo.—
Then, in December 1989, SIGINT coming out of the
joint NSA-CIA listening post inside the U.S. embassy in
Bucharest proved to be vitally important during the
military coup d’etat that overthrew Romanian dictator
Nicolae Ceaussescu. According to the late Ambassador
Warren Zimmermann, once the coup began, “the CIA
station started giving the ambassador intercepts which
were of course, tremendously valuable to letting him
make up his mind about how the coup was going and the
direction it was going in and what would happen to
Ceaussescu.”—

Operation Just Cause: The Invasion of

Panama

In the late 1980s, relations between the United States and
the Panamanian regime led by Manuel Noriega, formerly
the darling of the Reagan and Bush administrations,
deteriorated rapidly. In June 1987, the chief of staff of the
Panamanian Defense Forces (PDF) publicly accused
Noriega of having engaged in drug trafficking and other
assorted criminal enterprises. In 1988, Noriega was
indicted by a federal grand jury in Tampa, Florida, for
narcotics trafficking. As a result of the increasing tension
between the United States and Panama, NS A was ordered
to intensify its intelligence coverage of the country
beginning in 1988, but this effort was hampered by the
fact that Noriega had constructed a secure internal
communications system, which NS A could not penetrate.
Making matters even worse, as a 1994 paper written by a
U.S. Army intelligence officer later revealed, Noriega’s
frequent purges of the PDF officer corps, which removed
dozens of unreliable men from command positions, “had
eliminated most of SOUTHCOM’s [U.S. Southern
Command’s] and the CIA’s HUMINT capability.” Events
continued to spin out of control during 1988 and 1989. In
March 1988, there was an unsuccessful coup attempt to
oust Noriega. In April 1989, a CIA operative in Panama
was arrested. The following month, Noriega won a rigged
national election. This was followed by another
unsuccessful coup attempt in October 1989. By the late

fall of 1989, U.S. intelligence resources, including those
of NS A, were heavily committed to closely monitoring
events in Panama.—

When the United States invaded Panama on December
20, 1989 (an action designated Operation Just Cause),
NS A had been providing intelligence to its customers
through a special “Panama Cell.”— The agency’s primary
target was Noriega, who proved to be an elusive target,
moving around “many times during the day and night”
and sending “false radio and telephone traffic to further
conceal his whereabouts.” On December 19, the day
before the invasion was due to begin, NS A lost Noriega
because, according to a report written by an army
intelligence officer, he “took an unexpected trip to
Torrijos/Tocumen airport to visit one of his prostitutes.”
NS A informed the U.S. Army Ranger battalion whose
mission it was to capture Noriega of the latest
information, but the intelligence came too late. According
to the report, the rangers “missed him by the narrowest of
margins.”—

As it turned out, Noriega’s sudden disappearance may
well have been due to a warning he had just received.
While Noriega was visiting Colon, NS A intercepted a
telephone call from an unknown person in Washington to
Noriega warning him that, according to a State
Department source, the United States was about to invade
Panama. At ten p.m. on December 19, shortly before the

invasion, NS A intercept operators listened as the radio
station servicing the PDF general staff in Panama City
began urgently transmitting messages to all Panamanian
military units, warning them that the U.S. invasion was to
start in three hours. The warning message ordered all
troops to “report to their barracks, draw weapons and
prepare to fight.” Looking at the intercept, the commander
of the American assault force. Lieutenant General Carl
Stiner, advanced the time that the attack was to begin by
fifteen minutes in the hope that he would be able to
achieve some degree of surprise, but resistance from PDF
forces was still heavier than expected.—

Postscript

The 1980s saw NS A grow from more than fifty thousand
military and civilian personnel to seventy- five thousand in
1989, twenty-five thousand of whom worked at NS A
headquarters at Fort Meade. In terms of manpower alone,
the agency was the largest component of the U.S.
intelligence community by far, with a headquarters staff
larger than the entire CIA.—

As the agency’s size grew at a staggering pace, so did
the importance of its intelligence reporting. The amount
of reporting produced by NSA during the 1980s was
astronomical. According to former senior American
intelligence officials, on some days during the 1980s
SIGINT accounted for over 70 percent of the material
contained in the CIA’s daily intelligence report to
President Reagan. — Former CIA director (now Secretary
of Defense) Robert Gates stated, “The truth is, until the
late 1980s, U.S. signals intelligence was way out in front
of the rest of the world.”—

But NSA’s SIGINT efforts continued to produce less
information because of a dramatic increase in worldwide
telecommunications traffic volumes, which NSA had
great difficulty coping with. It also had to deal with the
growing availability and complexity of new

telecommunications technologies, such as cheaper and
more sophisticated encryption systems. By the late 1980s,
the number of intercepted messages flowing into NS A
headquarters at Fort Meade had increased to the point that
the agency’s staff and computers were only able to
process about 20 percent of the incoming materials.—
These developments were to come close to making NS A
deaf, dumb, and blind in the decade that followed.

CHAPTER 1 1

Troubles in Paradise

From Desert Storm to the War on Terrorism

The surest guarantee of disappointment is an
unrealistic expectation.

—THOMAS PATRICK CARROLL

For NS A, the 1990s started with a resounding explosion
and ended with a barely discernible whimper. 1989 will
forever be remembered as the year that marked the
beginning of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the
Communist regimes in Eastern Europe. In an event that
most people alive at the time remember well, on
November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall came crashing down,
and what was left of the shell-shocked East German
government succumbed and allowed its people to leave
the country for the first time. By June 1, 1990, the Berlin
Wall had ceased to exist and all crossing points between
East and West Berlin had been opened. Four months later.
East and West Germany were united as a single country
on October 1. Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev

radically changed course and adopted perestroikamid
glasnostdis the bywords of his government. Gorbachev’s
reforms set forth a chain reaction of events that were to
dramatically change the face of the world. Over the next
two years, all Soviet troops were withdrawn from Eastern
Europe, the Warsaw Pact was disbanded, all Eastern Euro
pe an nations became democracies, and the Soviet Union
disintegrated into sixteen separate countries. In the blink
of an eye, the Cold War was over, and with it, all of
NSA’s principal targets since the end of World War II
vanished. But despite the collapse of the Soviet Union,
there was to be no respite for NS A.-

Desert Storm

The invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990, by Iraq’s
Saddam Hussein caught the U.S. intelligence community
by surprise once again. In a familiar but worrisome
pattern, intelligence indicating the possibility of the
invasion was not properly analyzed or was discounted by
senior Bush administration officials, including then-
secretary of defense Dick Cheney, who did not think that
Hussein would be foolish enough to do it. General Lee
Butler, the commander of the Strategic Air Command,
was later quoted as saying, “We had the warning from the
intelligence community — we refused to acknowledge it.”-
It took five months for the United States to move
resources by land and sea to implement Desert Storm’s
ground attack by three hundred thousand coalition troops.
The operation began at three a.m. Baghdad time on
January 17, 1991, with a massive series of air strikes and
cruise missile attacks. The air campaign lasted thirty-eight
days, battering the Iraqi military into a state of
submission. On February 24, the much- anticipated ground
offensive was launched. One hundred hours later, the war
was over. President George H. W. Bush, who had no
intention of “driving on to Baghdad,” declared a cease-
fire on February 27, and the Iraqi forces signed a formal

agreement for cessation of hostilities on March 3.

Operation Desert Storm was a military victory of
historic proportions — one whose like would probably
never be seen again. In the span of only forty-three days,
forty-two Iraqi combat divisions were destroyed and
82,000 prisoners taken, the entire Iraqi navy was sunk,
and 50 percent of Iraq’s combat aircraft were destroyed or
fled to Iran to avoid destruction. The total number of Iraqi
dead and wounded, including civilians, will probably
never be known.- The cease-fire proved to be premature;
despite the annihilation of Iraq’s navy and combat
aircraft, significant remnants of its military, including the
Republican Guard, were never destroyed.

However, the crushing victory by U.S. and coalition
forces would not have been possible without the benefit
of NSA’s flood of intelligence, which was particularly
successful in helping to neutralize the huge Iraqi air
defense system — over 700 radars, almost 3,700 SAMs,
and 970 antiaircraft artillery sites spread throughout Iraq
and occupied Kuwait, which was denser than the Soviet
air defenses on the Kola Peninsula at the height of the
Cold War. In the five-month interval after the Iraqi
invasion of Kuwait, NSA’s SIGINT satellites, ground-
based listening posts, and reconnaissance aircraft mapped
the locations of all Iraqi SAM sites, radar stations, and
command centers, analyzed the system’s capability — and
figured out how the system worked and how to defeat it.
Within hours of the initial attack against it, the system

was reduced to rubble, giving the coalition unchallenged
air supremacy.-

Most of the Iraqi command-and-control targets hit
during the air campaign were based on SIGINT
information. NS A coverage of Iraqi government and
military strategic communications helped the U.S. Air
Force to target virtually all key radio stations and fiber-
optic communications nodes inside Iraq and Kuwait. The
monthlong air strikes, according to future NS A director
Rear Admiral John “Mike” McConnell, “prevented
communications up and down the Iraqi chain of command
and contributed to the confusion and lack of cohesion
among Iraqi ground forces as co alition ground forces
moved into Kuwait and Iraq.”-

But four sites were spared — ones that the surviving
Iraqi commanders in Kuwait would be forced to use to
communicate with their superiors in Basra and Baghdad.
The gamble succeeded. An army intelligence history
notes, “Just before the ground war [began] allied
intelligence agencies . . . left four [signal nodes] intact . . .
leading to valuable NS A intercepts which, in conjunction
with JSTARS [the army radar surveillance aircraft],
brought into view a vivid picture of their movements and
intentions.

NSA’s interception of messages to and from Nazar
Hamdoon, Iraq’s U.N. ambassador, showed that Hussein
really believed his army could inflict heavy losses on the

allied forces and repel any attempt to liberate Kuwait. The
intercepts also revealed that Hussein refused to concede
defeat until virtually the end of the war, suggesting to
American intelligence analysts that the Iraqi dictator was
delusional and/or operating in an information vacuum.-
But many senior American intelligence officials and
military commanders found NSA’s performance
disappointing. First, the agency was unable to gain access
to the communications of the Iraqi army and Republican
Guard in Kuwait and southern Iraq until the very end of
the war because of tight and doggedly maintained Iraqi
communications security discipline until the air offensive
began on January 17 — to the extent that Iraqi

commanders were “even pronouncing death sentences for
those who used two-way radios or telephones.” - Not
even the Russians had been able to maintain such
discipline at the height of the Cold War. As a result, the
Iraqis effectively neutralized much of NS A and the U.S.
military’s ability to collect intelligence on enemy forces
before and during Desert Storm.- According to David
McManis, NSA’s representative at the Pentagon during
the war, Hussein “learned what his vulnerabilities were,
and, boy. I’ll tell you he’s played it right. We’ve never
faced a tougher partner in terms of [SIGINT] access.”—
SIGINT did not become a significant factor in the
ground war until it began on February 24, when the Iraqis
hurriedly began redeploying their elite Republican Guard

divisions from their reserve positions to face the U.S. and
allied invasion force. This meant that they had to stop
using their buried land-lines. After that, NSA’s SIGINT
intercept operators had a field day. For example, NS A
provided critical intelligence about the movements of
three key Republican Guard divisions on February 26,
which revealed that the commander of the Iraqi Third
Corps had ordered his units to withdraw as rapidly as
possible from Kuwait, a withdrawal that quickly turned
into a rout.—

The greatest threat, at least psychologically, was
presented by the limited-range Iraqi Scud missiles, which
after the invasion of Kuwait were dispersed to
presurveyed bases throughout Iraq. On January 18, the
day after the U.S. air campaign began, the Iraqi missile
batteries began lobbing Scud at Israel and later at Saudi
Arabia. While none hit any military targets, public anxiety
in the United States and Israel about these attacks forced
the White House to order NS A and U.S. Central
Command (CENTCOM) to dedicate a significant amount
of their SIGINT collection resources to locating the
missiles so that they could be destroyed by air strikes.—

This proved to be virtually impossible. A study written
by a U.S. Army intelligence officer who served in
Operation Desert Storm notes. “The quick nature of Iraqi
‘shoot and scoof tactics made detection extremely
difficult, if not near impossible. The Iraqi missile units
maintained excellent radio security, only infrequently

communicating target data and fire commands with higher
headquarters.” The net result was that SIGINT, despite
intensive efforts, did not find a single Scud missile
launcher during the entire Persian Gulf War.—

Because of the limited use of radio communications by
the Iraqis, U.S. Army and Marine Corps tactical SIGINT
collection units produced virtually no intelligence during
the war, which came as a nasty shock to U.S. military
intelligence officials. Moreover, army and marine field
commanders below the corps level confirmed that they
received no SIGINT support from NS A during Operation
Desert Storm. Apart from onerous security limitations on
the dissemination of SIGINT material to the commanders
who needed it the most, NS A tried to disguise the
SIGINT origins of what intelligence it did provide, and
generated reports that were so chopped up that they were
virtually useless.—

But the greatest problem for SIGINT was the perpetual
shortage of Arabic linguists, which forced NS A and the
U.S. military to grant emergency security clearances to a
number of Iraqi Americans serving in the military when
Kuwait was invaded and ship them to the Persian Gulf to
become instant radio intercept operators. In addition, three
hundred Kuwaiti students were recruited from U.S.
universities. They were given a crash course in the
rudiments of SIGINT collection, flown to Saudi Arabia
wearing the uniforms of sergeants in the Kuwaiti army,
and then parceled out to various U.S. Army SIGINT units

in the region. The commander of all U.S. Army
intelligence forces in the gulf later wrote of the service
provided by these young Kuwaiti volunteers: “Their
performance and contribution was magnificent and
immeasur able ... we couldn’t have done it without
em. —

The net result, however, was that in the opinion of
senior military field commanders and intelligence
officials who served in the Persian Gulf, SIGINT and
HUMINT did not perform particularly well during
Operation Desert Shield/Storm. Instead, photo
reconnaissance satellites, unmanned reconnaissance
drones (referred to within the military as unmanned aerial
vehicles, or UAVs), and airborne radar surveillance
aircraft all proved to be more important to the successful
prosecution of the war.—

Retrenchment and Debasement

Even before the defeat of Iraq was completed, back at
Fort Meade NSA’s director. Admiral William Studeman,
had become concerned that the health of his agency was
not good. Declassified documents reveal that the stifling,
multilay-ered NS A bureaucracy had been allowed to grow
unchecked during the 1980s because the agency’s
nominal watchdogs in the CIA, the Pentagon, and
Congress had paid scant attention to what was going on,
allowing the agency to become top-heavy and bloated. A

February 1991 House intelligence committee report found
“very limited internal oversight of Agency [NS A]
programs,” as well as no supervision of the agency by
either the Defense Department Inspector General’s Office
or the congressional watchdog agency, the General
Accountability Office (GAO).— A few months later, a
report prepared by the Defense Department’s inspector
general confirmed, “NS A did not have sufficient
oversight mechanisms to ensure the Agency efficiently
accomplished its mission.”—

An internal NSA study sent to Studeman before Iraq’s
surrender noted, “The Agency is effective, but it is not
efficient . . . This inefficiency may waste money; it may
waste technology; but the task force is convinced that it is
surely wasting people.” The agency’s vast bureaucracy
was strangling it. The report’s key conclusion was this:
“The Agency is in inchoate crisis, and if there is a single
alarm to sound in this report, it is that the National
Security Agency needs major fundamental change and
needs it soon.”—

This came as a shock at a time when NSA not only was
the largest American intelligence agency, but also
presented itself as the best organized, the most efficient,
and the producer of the best intelligence available.— The
agency’s reputation inside the Bush White House and
elsewhere in Washington had never been higher. But
NSA was, in reality, a deeply troubled organization.

suffering from a malaise that was very much of its own
making.—

Shortly after the tearing down of the Berlin Wall and the
subsequent demise of the Soviet Union, the rationale for
maintaining a massive Cold War intelligence community
was seen as questionable, and beginning in 1990, the
Bush administration and Congress sharply cut the national
intelligence budget. In late 1990, Studeman, faced with a
shrinking budget, was forced to order substantial staff
cuts, which were implemented shortly after the end of
Desert Storm.—

The agency began to retire hundreds of its employees,
many of whom had decades of experience and represented
an irreplaceable institutional memory. One former NS A
official who took early retirement in 1992 recalled one of
his colleagues telling him with great sadness at his
retirement party, “The good old days are gone forever.”—

NSA’s rapidly shrinking budget and workforce meant
that reforming its bureaucracy was notihQ agency’s top
priority. In a 1994 study, an army intelligence officer
noted, “Intelligence analysts must now consider an array
of 160 nations and many other independent groups as
separate entities without the simplicity of the East- West
division.”— In order to use its stretched resources to
deliver intelligence product to its customers, NSA’s two
top priorities became (a) improving the quality of SIGINT
support to the U.S. military and (b) maintaining NSA’s

access to the communications of its growing global target
base.—

But owing to bureaucratic bungling, mismanagement,
and faulty leadership, over the next eight years not only
did NS A fail to effect any meaningful reforms to its
management and financial practices, but it also failed to
address the dramatic changes then taking place in global
telecommunications technology. The agency’s morale
plummeted and its mission suffered. NSA’s director of
operations, James Taylor, wrote in a memo, “The mission
should drive the budget process. In spite of our best
efforts through the 1990s, the opposite has most often
been the case. Our changes to deal with this have never
gotten to the root of the problem. We have merely dressed
up the problem in new clothes.”—

Making matters worse, NS A simply did not have the
ability to effectively cover the plethora of newly created
nations holding nuclear weapons, such as Belarus, the
Ukraine, and Kazakhstan.— Many of the so-called rogue
nation states, such as Libya, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and North
Korea, were already closing off SIGINT access by
shifting from radio circuits to buried landlines and fiber-
optic cables.—

The worst threat to NSA’s fragile code-breaking
capabilities came not from abroad but from a tiny
computer software company in northern California called
RSA Data Security, headed by Jim Bidzos. NS A was

aware by the late 1980s that new encryption technologies
being developed by private companies meant, according
to a declassified internal NS A publication, that NSA’s
code breakers were falling behind: “The underlying rate
of cryptologic development throughout the world is faster
than ever before and getting faster. Cryptologic literature
in the public domain concerning advanced analytic
techniques is proliferating. Inexpensive high-grade
cryptographic equipment is readily accessible on the open
market.”— The agency was still able to break the cipher
systems used by a small number of key countries around
the world, such as Libya and Iran, but this could change
quickly as target nations began using commercially
available and rapidly evolving encryption software
packages. It would have a catastrophic impact on the
agency’s code-breaking efforts.—

In April 1992, Studeman stepped down as director of
NS A to take the post of deputy director of the CIA. His
last memorandum to the agency warned that given NSA’s
continually shrinking resources, “target technology will
be tough, and many outsiders will want to rationalize a
reduced threat dimension in order to further decrement
intelligence for alternative agendas. There will be a trend
to de-emphasize technical intelligence in favor of cheaper
and historically less productive intelligence means.”
Studeman urged the agency to focus on “technical and
operational innovation to deal with a changing and
changed world ... We cannot be layered, inefficient.

bureaucratic, top heavy, isolated, or turf minded.” Sadly,
Studeman’s warnings went largely unheeded, and his
recommendations were not implemented by his
successors. Six years after his departure, NS A was on the
verge of going deaf, dumb, and blind.

The McConnell Years atNSA: 1992-1996

Admiral Studeman’s replacement as NSA’s director was
another career navy intelligence officer, forty-eight-year-
old Vice Admiral John “Mike” Mc-Connell. Bom in
Greenville, South Carolina, on July 26, 1943, McConnell
joined the navy in 1966 after graduating from Furman
College in Greenville with a bachelor’s degree in
economics. Over the next twenty-five years, he held a
succession of increasingly important positions in naval
intelligence, including deputy director of the DIA for joint
staff support from 1990 until being nominated for the top
job at NS A in 1992.— McConnell was chosen not because
of his intelligence background, but rather for his superior
communications skills, which he demonstrated while
serving as the Joint Chiefs of Staff intelligence briefer
during Operation Desert Storm. The chairman of the JCS,
General Colin Powell, lobbied vigorously for
McConnell’s appointment.—

In a New 7orA:erarticle, Lawrence Wright describes
McConnell as a man with “pale, thin, sandy hair, blue
eyes, and skin as pink as a baby’s. His back troubles him.

and he walks with a slight stoop, which becomes more
pronounced as the day wears on. His friends describe him
as quick-minded and crafty, with an unusual ability to
synthesize large amounts of information. A workaholic,
he regularly lugged two briefcases home each night.”—
McConnell was determined to give the U.S. military
more and better intelligence and maintain NSA’s access
to the global communications infrastructure, as well as
making the agency “leaner and more effective,” despite
shrinking budgets and declining manpower.— In
September 1992, McConnell, aware that the Bush White
House intended to impose more budget cuts on NS A,
ordered a preemptive overhaul and reorganization of the
entire agency coupled with deep personnel cuts. He knew
that the “reduction in force” was going to hurt his agency
badly, but he was convinced that reducing the size of
NSA’s huge and very expensive bureaucracy was the only
way to find the money to develop and buy the new and
very expensive SIGINT collection technology NS A
desperately needed. McConnell dryly noted some years
later, “The message that I took to the NS A bureaucracy
was not warmly embraced.”—

Between 1990 and 1995, the U.S. intelligence
community’s budget had been cut by 16 percent, and 20
percent of the community’s workforce (20,559 men and
women) had been forced into early retirement or laid off.
NSA’s budget was slashed by one third, which forced the

agency to cut the size of its workforce by an equal amount
and impose a freeze on hiring and pay raises.

A declassified congressional study concluded, “One of
the side effects of NSA’s downsizing, outsourcing and
transformation has been the loss of critical program
management expertise, systems engineering, and
requirements definition skills.” Research and
development on new collection and processing systems
and technologies came to a near-complete standstill as
NSA’s money was diverted to keeping ongoing
operations alive and producing intelligence. —

One Damn Crisis After Another

In November 1992, President Bush ordered American
troops into Somalia to restore order and feed millions of
starving Somalis in the famine- stricken, war-torn country.
The intelligence that was available was so bad that
General Anthony Zinni, the U.S. military’s chief of
operations there, was quoted as saying, “I don’t know
Somalis from salami.”—

NS A played virtually no role in the U.S. military
intervention because there was no Somali government and
thus no diplomatic or military communications for it to
monitor. The first army combat unit sent in, the Tenth
Mountain Division, brought no SIGINT intercept gear
with it. Because of this oversight, it was unable to
“exploit the lucrative long-range radio communications

between the warring factions” after discovering that the
militia forces commanded by General Mohammed Farrah
Aideed indeed used radios and walkie-talkies. The U.S.
Marine Corps, however, sent a small SIGINT detachment
to support the first marine combat units to land. So
effective was the detachment’s gathering of critically
important intelligence that it was awarded the NSA’s
1993 Director’s Trophy. —

SIGINT played a relatively small but nonetheless
important role during the U.S. invasion of Haiti, in
September 1994. Prior to and during the invasion, NSA
listening posts provided strategic SIGINT support for
American forces by monitoring the shortwave
communications traffic of the Haitian armed forces and
intercepting the telephone calls of the Haitian strongman
Lieutenant General Raoul Cedras as he negotiated his
resignation and safe passage from the country with
foreign intermediaries. NSA also monitored the
communications of the Haitian exile leader and future
president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, as he waited in a hotel
suite in Washington and provided insights into his
intentions that were useful to the White House and State
Department. —

Once U.S. Army ground troops had taken control of the
country, army SIGINT intercept personnel (including a
small number of newly recruited Creole linguists) were
flown in from the United States to monitor the citizens’
band radio communications and walkie-talkie traffic of

what was left of the former regime’s army and police
forces, using portable radio scanners purchased from
Radio Shack and other commercial vendors.—

But by far, the crisis that taxed NS A the most was the
civil wars in the former Yugoslavia, especially the civil
war in Bosnia. NS A had begun paying serious attention to
Yugoslavia in 1990-1991 as the country disintegrated
into six in dependent states, which became engulfed in an
orgy of bloodshed and ethnic cleansing.

The best intelligence came from SIGINT, especially
from the joint CIA-NSA listening post inside the U.S.
embassy in Belgrade. Unfortunately, according to the late
Warren Zimmermann, the U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia
from 1989 to 1992, in 1991 he was not provided with
these “real time intercepts involving Serbian politicians,
Yugoslav army, people we had a tremendous amount of
interest in. It was information that would have been
extremely useful to us in our dealings then.”—

SIGINT coverage of the bitter civil war in Bosnia
between Croatian, Serbian, and Bosnian Muslim
militaries was intensified shortly after President Bill
Clinton was inaugurated in January 1993. The newly
reconstituted NS A Operations Analysis Group A, headed
from 1992 to 1996 by William Black Jr., focused on
identifying and tracking the command-and-control nets,
the air defense networks, and the logistics structures
supporting the Serbian-backed Bosnian Serbs, the
Croatians, and the Bosnian Muslims as they struggled for

control of Bosnia.—

NSA’s SIGINT satellites were able to intercept much of
the communications traffic coming in and out of the
Bosnian Serb general staff headquarters, which was
translated and processed in real time by NS A and military
SIGINT personnel at NSA’s Bad Aibling Station listening
post, in southern Germany, then passed to consumers
within the U.S. intelligence community. The information
contained in these intercepts yielded vital intelligence
about Serb military activities in Bosnia, as well as insights
into the somewhat twisted personality of the Bosnian Serb
military commander. General Ratko Mladic.— NSA’s
coverage of the telecommunications traffic of the Muslim
Bosnian government in Sarajevo was also excellent. In
1996, SIGINT intercepts of Bosnian government
communications traffic revealed that hundreds of Iranian
Revolutionary Guard military personnel were still
operating throughout the territory controlled by the
Bosnian government, despite the government’s promise to
throw them out of the country under the terms of the 1995
Dayton Peace Accords.—

SIGINT played a key role in ensuring the effectiveness
of the U.S. and NATO air strikes on Bosnian Serb
military units and their air defense network in August and
September 1995. Before the strikes, NSA’s SIGINT
assets allowed U.S. intelligence analysts to thoroughly
map the Yugoslav and Bosnian Serb air defense systems

in Bosnia. SIGINT also showed that Yugoslavian early-
warning radars positioned inside Bosnian Serb territory
were monitoring NATO air activity over Bosnia, and that
the data from these radars was being fed in near real time
to Bosnian Serb army commanders in northeastern
Bosnia.—

After the Dayton Peace Accords were signed on
November 21, 1995, American ground troops belonging
to the First Armored Division were sent into Bosnia in
early 1996 as part of a multinational peacekeeping force.
They were accompanied by a host of American SIGINT
collection assets, whose mission it was to warn the
American forces of any threat from the former warring
parties. Unfortunately, there was little to monitor since
most of the communications and air defense infrastructure
had been destroyed or, according to a U.S. Army SIGINT
officer, “intimidated into silence during NATO-
sanctioned air strikes conducted in May and August 1995
. . . The loss of access to many of these intelligence
sources created a difficult problem for continued
monitoring of compliance by the former belligerent
parties in the Dayton Peace Accords.” By mid- 1996,
SIGINT in Bosnia had come to an almost complete
standstill, since Serbian radio traffic decreased markedly
after military operations ended.—

Still, senior Clinton administration officials marveled at
the agency’s ability to gamer one “hof’ intelligence scoop
after another. For example, SIGINT was instmmental in

cracking the communications network of the Medellin
cartel, revealing the hiding place of its leader, Pablo
Escobar, who was killed in December 1993 by the
Colombian National Police. In the mid-1990s, NS A
produced some incredibly important intelligence about
what was transpiring inside the government of Saudi
Arabia, including cell phone conversations of senior
members of the Saudi royal family talking about high-
level government policy.— Then on February 24, 1996,
NS A intercepted the radio chatter of Cuban fighter pilots
as they shot down two unarmed Cessna aircraft, flown by
Cuban American pilots belonging to the Miami-based
organization Brothers to the Rescue, off the coast of
Cuba. The incident led President Clinton to sign the so-
called Helms-Burton Act, which made permanent the
economic embargo against Cuba, which had been in place
unofficially since 1962.—

Bad and Worse Choices

Based on NSA’s less than stellar performance in Somalia,
Haiti, and Bosnia, senior military intelligence officials
were demanding immediate improvements in the
intelligence support they got from NS A. In all three
crises, it turned out that NS A had very little information
in its files about the enemy forces facing the U.S. military.
During the actual operations, as noted earlier, it was
quickly discovered that much of the high-tech SIGINT

equipment that NS A and the military brought with them
to these less developed countries was poorly suited for the
“low-tech” surroundings they were operating in.

And in those cases where there were some
communications to intercept, once the enemy fighters in
Somalia and Bosnia discovered that NS A and the U.S.
military were monitoring their communications, they
turned off their radios and reverted to human couriers and
intercept-proof telephone landlines.— Particularly galling
for NS A officials was the fact that in all three operations,
HUMINT collected by the CIA and U.S. military
intelligence was the primary intelligence source for the
U.S. military forces — not SIGINT.—

Many senior Pentagon officials, rightly or wrongly,
believed that NS A was not giving commanders in the
field the intelligence they needed. One reason for this
problem was that the older and more experienced NS A
analysts who knew more about the needs of these
customers had been let go or had resigned as part of the
agency’s “reduction in force” in the early 1990s.—

The long series of crises described above stretched
collection resources to the breaking point and diverted
personnel and capital away from much-needed
modernization programs and infrastructure improvement
projects.—

As a result, the crucial reform plans that Mike
McConnell brought with him when he came to the agency

in May 1992 never got implemented. In fact, all
indications are that NSA’s bureaucratic infarction got
worse during McConnell’s tenure, leading the agency to
make costly mistakes in resource allocation and spending
priorities. For example, a 1996 Defense Department
inspector general report revealed that in 1991 and 1992
alone, NS A lost eighty- two million dollars’ worth of
equipment, which it chose to write off on its financial
statements rather than find out the fate of—

But what was really killing NS A was the size of the
agency’s payroll. Although the number of NSA personnel
plummeted during McConnell’s tenure, the cost of paying
those who remained skyrocketed as the agency had to
reach deep into its pockets to try to keep its best and
brightest from jumping ship and joining the dot-com
boom. NSA stripped ever-increasing amounts of money
from infrastructure improvement programs and its
research and development efforts so that it could meet its
payroll. It was left with little money to develop and build
the new equipment desperately needed to access
international communications traffic being carried by new
and increasingly important telecommunications
technologies, such as the Internet, cellular telephones, and
fiber-optic cables. It was a decision that would, according
to a former senior NSA official, “come back and bite us in
the ass.”—

The Minihan Years at NSA: 1996—1999

In February 1996, NS A director McConnell retired.
During his tenure, in the opinion of senior agency
officials, he simply failed to address the stultifying
bureaucracy in NSA’s upper ranks and to fully grasp the
scope of agency operations, though he was an effective
spokesman for NS A in front of administration officials
and Congress.—

His replacement was the fifty-two-year-old director of
DIA, Lieutenant General Kenneth Minihan of the U.S.
Air Force. A career intelligence officer but with little
operational experience with SIGINT, Minihan was bom
in Pampa, Texas, on December 31, 1943. After graduating
from Florida State University in June 1966, he was
commissioned into the air force. As he moved up in rank,
he served in a wide variety of intelligence positions,
including air force assistant chief of staff, intelligence,
from 1994 to 1995; he was the director of DIA from 1995
until being named NS A director in Febmary 1996.—

By his own admission, Minihan was chosen because the
Pentagon believed he would not only emphasize SIGINT
support for the military, but also improve the Pentagon’s
shaky customer-client relationship with the agency.—

Many former senior NS A officials interviewed for this
book regard Minihan’s tenure at Fort Meade, from 1996
to 1999, as a period fraught with controversy, during
which NS A continued to refocus its efforts away from
traditional targets and toward new transnational targets.

such as narcotics trafficking and international terrorism,
and not always with great success. Money, or lack
thereof, was a recurring theme during Minihan’s term in
office. NS A, like every other agency in the U.S.
intelligence community, was trying to get more money
out of the Clinton White House or Congress, but without
much success. CIA director George Tenet admitted, “The
fact is that by the mid- to late 1990s American
intelligence was in Chapter 1 1 , and neither Congress nor
the executive branch did much about it.”— This led to
pitched battles within the intelligence community over
which agency would get how much of the money
grudgingly allocated by Congress. In November 1998,
Minihan, who by this time was a lame duck, made a final
plea to the White House and the Pentagon to approve
more money for NS A, pointing out that since the end of
the Cold War, the agency had lost one third of its
manpower and budget and much of its ability to access
target communications, and that its antiquated
infrastructure was crumbling and desperately in need of
repair. He failed, in part because of the widely held view
that NS A was being badly mismanaged.—

The congressional intelligence oversight committees
could not get Minihan or his deputy, Barbara McNamara,
to make fundamental reforms or even to send to Congress
something as simple as a business plan for the agency.
Inaction on the part of the agency’s leadership forced
Congress to act. In the House Intelligence Committee’s

May 1998 annual report, the chairman, Porter Goss,
announced that his committee had “fenced in,” or
restricted, the agency’s access to a large part of its annual
budget because of NSA’s continuing intransigence and
resistance to reform.—

Today, in the opinion of some NS A veterans, Minihan’s
tenure at the helm of NS A is viewed as having been
largely ineffectual. When he produced an agency mission
statement in June 1996 titled “National Cryptologic
Strategy for the 21st Century,” agency staff members
were mortified to find it full of vague generalities rather
than specifics about how NS A was to meet the increasing
challenges it faced.—

Efforts by Minihan and his staff to patch up the
agency’s rocky relationship with the Pentagon largely
failed. In March 1997, a full year after he took office,
Minihan briefed the senior military leadership on how
NS A would improve its SIGINT support for the military.
One senior military intelligence official who attended it
recalls that Minihan used every current Pentagon
buzzword {asymmetric, paradigm, templates, etc.) but
offered nothing tangible about how things would be
improved — other than suggesting that NS A and the
military work more closely together.—

Yet as the NS A muddled along and one scandal after
another rocked the CIA during the mid-1990s, and as the
agency’s clandestine intelligence capabilities slowly

eroded, the Clinton administration came to increasingly
treat NS A and its sister intelligence organization, the
National Reconnaissance Office, with greater deference,
in large part because the SIGINT coming out of NS A was
viewed as “cleaner” and less controversial than the
material produced by the CIA.—

The War on Terrorism

During General Minihan’s term, the radical Islamic
terrorist group al Qaeda (Arabic for “the base”) began
appearing on the U.S. intelligence community’s radar
screen. It was headed by a Saudi multimillionaire and
veteran of the 1980s war against the Soviets in
Afghanistan named Osama bin Laden, who was then
living in exile in the Sudan. The earliest known NS A
reporting on bin Laden’s activities dates back to 1995 and
was based in large part on monitoring the telephone calls
coming in and out of his ranch near the Sudanese capital
of Khartoum. For example, the agency intercepted a series
of telephone calls congratulating bin Laden on the June
25, 1996, bombing of the Khobar Towers in Dhahran,
Saudi Arabia, which killed nineteen American military
personnel. (In fact, it was Hezbollah and the Iranian
government, not al Qaeda, that had carried out the Khobar
Towers attack.)—

Despite these successes, NS A was experiencing
considerable difficulty monitoring bin Laden. But when

he was forced out of the Sudan in mid- 1996 by the
Sudanese government and moved to Afghanistan, it made
SIGINT coverage of his activities significantly easier.—

In November 1996, one of bin Laden’s operatives in the
United States, named Ziyad Khalil, purchased a Inmarsat
Compact M satellite telephone and more than three
thousand hours of prepaid satellite time from a company
in Deer Park, New York, for seventy-five hundred dollars.
In a matter of weeks, the sat phone was in the hands of
bin Laden in Afghanistan. It was assigned the
international telephone number 00873-682-505-331.—
When NS A was unable to intercept all of the satellite
phone traffic, the CIA mounted its own independent
SIGINT collection operation. The CIA managed to
intercept half of the traffic, and NS A succeeded in getting
the rest, but refused to share its take with the CIA.—

Over the next two years, NSA’s relationship with the
CIA deteriorated as officials from the two agencies
clashed repeatedly and refused to cooperate with one
another on joint SIGINT operations against al Qaeda.
During this period, NS A and the CIA independently
monitored the telephone conversations of bin Laden and
his military operations chief, Mohammed Atef, as they
kept in touch with their operatives and sympathizers
around the world. Some of these intercepts helped foil a
number of bin Laden terrorist plots, including two
terrorist attacks on American embassies overseas in 1997

and seven attacks on American diplomatic or military
establishments overseas in 1998, among them a planned
bombing aimed at American forces stationed at Prince
Sultan Air Base, in Saudi Arabia, and the hijacking of an
American airliner.—

Up until this point, NSA’s efforts to monitor bin
Laden’s activities had been underresourced and desultory.
But on August 7, 1998, this changed when al Qaeda
operatives bombed the American embassies in Nairobi,
Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killing 224 people
(12 of whom were Americans) and injuring thousands
more. Overnight, bin Laden became the agency’s number-
one target. Unfortunately, news reports after the East
Africa bombings revealed that NS A was listening to bin
Laden’s phone conversations. Two months later, in
October 1998, bin Laden ceased using the satellite
telephone, depriving NS A and the CIA of their best
source of information about what bin Laden and his
cohorts were up to.—

The Hayden Era at NS A

On February 23, 1999, the Pentagon announced that NS A
director Minihan’s replacement was to be Major General
Michael Hayden of the U.S. Air Force, who was then
serving in Seoul as the deputy chief of staff of the United
Nations Command and U.S. Forces in Korea. Hayden, age
fifty-two, was a veteran intelligence officer who had held

a wide variety of high-level intelligence and policy
positions over a thirty-two-year career prior to being
named NS A director. These included involvement
managing intelligence collection operations in the former
Yugoslavia during the mid-1990s war in Bosnia, and
commanding the Air Intelligence Agency from January
1996 to September 1997. Hayden pinned on his third star
and then arrived for his first day of work at Fort Meade on
March 26, 1999.22

Genial but unprepossessing, Hayden was described by
journalist Bob Woodward as “short and balding, with a
big head and large-framed eyeglasses — definitely not out
of central casting for a TV talk show or a general.” But
Hayden’s qualities had nothing to do with his looks. His
subordinates had to learn to pace themselves for the long,
grueling days that he put in at the office. He had a
reputation for being thoughtful, honest, and forthright and
was well known within the U.S. military establishment for
his low-key management style and, perhaps more
important, his ability to get along with people with
temperaments and personalities different from his own.
Hayden had just taken over when the United States
plunged into another war in the former Yugoslavia, a
territory that he knew all too well from his involvement in
the mid-1990s conflict. This time, the war was over yet
another rebellious Yugoslav province that was seeking its
independence — Kosovo.

SIGINT and the War in Kosovo

The three-month war in the Yugoslav province of
Kosovo, which lasted from March 24, 1999, to June 10,
1999, pitted the overwhelming might of the combined
military forces of the United States and NATO against
Slobodan Milosevic ’s overmatched Yugoslavian military.
After talks held in Rambouillet, France, to try to negotiate
a peaceful settlement of the Kosovo crisis resulted in
stalemate, the decision was made to wage a unique kind
of war, one conducted from the air only. On March 24,
U.S. and NATO warplanes began bombing Yugoslav
military positions in Kosovo and throughout Yugoslavia
to force the Belgrade government to accept the terms of
the Rambouillet Accord. The name given to the U.S. and
NATO bombing campaign was Operation Allied Force.
Most of NS A’ s SIGINT effort was focused on collecting
as much intelligence as possible about the Yugoslav
strategic command-and-control network and air defense
system to help the U.S. and allied warplanes win air
superiority.

All in all, postwar reporting indicated that NS A
performed well during the war, with more than 300,000
Yugoslav telephone calls, 150,000 e-mail messages, and
over 2,000 fax messages being intercepted, covering
Yugoslav troop movements, force status reports, logistics
updates, hospital duty logs, and more. It was a very
impressive performance for a three-month conflict, made

all the more remarkable by the fact that literally no
American soldiers were killed in action. —

The 1 00 Days of Change

Hayden entered the Fort Meade complex in March 1999
determined to make his mark quickly on the agency he
had inherited. He flew down to Austin to meet with
former NS A director Bobby Ray Inman, who was now
teaching at the University of Texas. Inman advised
Hayden that the biggest challenge he would face running
NS A was obstruction from NSA’s senior civilian
officials, which Inman had encountered when he ran the
agency during the 1970s.—

Hayden flew back to Fort Meade and found on his desk
a thick report prepared for his predecessor, Minihan, by
the NS A Scientific Advisory Board, chaired by retired
lieutenant general James Clapper Jr. The Clapper report
confirmed many of the findings of the House and Senate
intelligence committees, including the conclusions that
because the agency did not have a business plan, it was
mismanaging its SIGINT collection assets, and that the
agency research and development efforts “lacked focus
and innovation.” A second report from Clapper arrived a
few months later, which urged Hayden to retool NS A
“organizationally, programically, and technologically.”
This was followed by an April 9 memo from his director
of operations, James Taylor, who told Hayden in no

uncertain terms, “The first and most important issue for
NSA/CSS is to reform our management and leadership
system ... We have good people in a flawed system.”—

The Taylor memo was the last straw for Hayden.
Clearly his agency was in deeper trouble than he had
believed when he took the job, but he needed to know the
full extent of the problem. In April 1999, he
commissioned two management reviews on the state of
NS A; one he assigned to a number of the agency’s
reform-minded Young Turks, who had chafed at the lack
of action under Minihan, while the second report was to
be prepared by five outside experts. Both reports, handed
to Hayden in October, were scathing, with one concluding
that NS A had become “an agency mired in bureaucratic
conflict, suffering from poor leadership and losing touch
with the government clients it serves.” Hayden later told
reporters, “The agency has got to make some changes
because by standing still, we are going to fall behind very
quickly.”—

Hayden’s reformation and modernization plan, “100
Days of Change,” hit NS A like a tidal wave on November
10 with an announcement to the entire NS A that “our
Agency must undergo change if we are to remain viable
in the future.” Hayden began by streamlining the agency’s
labyrinthine management structure, bringing in from the
outside a new chief financial officer to try to reform
NSA’s financial and accounting practices and a veteran
air force intelligence officer. Major General Tiiu Kera, to

try to improve NSA’s tense relations with the Pentagon.
Overnight, the agency’s top priority became
modernization, while its SIGINT mission became the
secondary priority. Money was taken from ongoing
SIGINT operations and shifted to modernization projects,
with particular emphasis on redirecting NSA’s SIGINT
effort against what Hayden described as the “digital
global network.” The budget cuts hurt, forcing Hayden to
tell his worried employees in January 2000, “I realize the
business areas that we decide to disengage from to pay for
this transformation will be very important to many of you.
I ask you to trust yourselves and your management on the
tough calls we must make this winter to survive and
prosper as an Agency.”—

Hayden and his senior managers had hoped that they
could keep the massive reengineering of NS A out of the
public realm. But these hopes were dashed when, on
December 6, reporter Seymour Hersh published an article
in the New TorArermagazine that blew the lid off NSA’s
secret, revealing that America’s largest intelligence
agency was having trouble performing its mission.—
Hersh’ s article set off a furious debate within NSA about
the difficulties the agency was facing. The considered
judgment of many NSA insiders was in many respects
harsher and more critical than anything Hersh had written.
Diane Mezzanotte, then a staff officer in NSA’s Office of
Corporate Relations, wrote, “NSA is facing a serious
survival problem, brought about by the widespread use of

emerging communications technologies and public
encryption keys, draconian budget cuts, and an
increasingly negative public perception of NS A and its
SIGINT operations.” —

Less than sixty days later, another disaster hit the
agency. During the week of January 23, 2000, the main
SIGINT processing computer at NS A collapsed and for
four days could not be restarted because of a critical
software anomaly. The result was an intelligence
blackout, with no intelligence reporting coming out of
Fort Meade for more than seventy-two hours. A
declassified NS A report notes, “As one result, the
President’s Daily Briefing — 60% of which is normally
based on SIGINT — ^was reduced to a small portion of its
typical size.”—

The Switchboard

Located on the strategically important southwestern tip of
the Arabian Peninsula, Yemen is one of the poorest and
least developed nations in the world. Although the
Yemeni government is dedicated to modernizing the
nation, the deeply religious Yemeni people remain firmly
rooted in the past. For centuries, Dhamar Province, a
mountainous region south of Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, has
been the home of the warlike and rebellious al-Hada tribe.
One of its most prominent members was a man named
Ahmed Mohammed Ali al-Hada.—

Fiercely devoted to the ultraconservative Salafi
interpretation of the Koran, al-Hada was steadfastly and
vocally opposed to any form of Western influence or
presence in the Arab world. Yemeni security officials
confirm that al-Hada fought with the mujahideen against
the Soviet military in Afghanistan during the 1980s,
returning to Yemen in the early 1990s a fully committed
jihadi and a member of Osama bin Laden’s newly created
al Qaeda organization. Both of al-Hada’ s daughters
married al Qaeda operatives. One daughter was married to
a senior operative named Mustafa Abdulqader al-Ansari.
The other, Hoda, was married to a Saudi named Khalid al-
Mihdhar, who on 9/1 1 would lead the al Qaeda team that
crashed a Boeing 757 airliner into the Pentagon.—
Al-Hada’ s principal function within al Qaeda since
1996 had been to serve as a secret communications cutout
between bin Laden and his military operations chief,
Mohammed Atef, and the organization’s operatives
around the world. Bin Laden and Atef would call al-
Hada’ s house in Sana’a and give him orders that he was
to convey telephonically to al Qaeda’s operatives in
Europe, Asia, and Africa, and al-Hada would relay back
to bin Laden and Atef in Afghanistan the reports he got
from the field. Records of bin Laden’s satellite phone
calls from Afghanistan show that he called al-Hada in
Sana’a at least 221 times between May 1996 and the time
that the Saudi terrorist leader stopped using his phone in
October 1998.—

U.S. intelligence first learned about al-Hada and his
telephone number from one of the captured al Qaeda
planners of the August 1998 East Africa bombings, a
Saudi national named Mohamed Rashed Daoud
al-’Owhali, who was arrested by Kenyan authorities on
August 12, 1998, five days after the bombing of the U.S.
embassy in Nairobi. Interrogated by a team of FBI agents,
al-’Owhali gave up the key relay number (01 1-967-1-200-
578) — the telephone number of Ahmed al-Hada.—

NS A immediately began intercepting al-Hada’ s
telephone calls. This fortuitous break could not have
come at a better time for the U.S. intelligence community,
since NS A had just lost its access to bin Laden’s satellite
phone traffic. For the next three years, the telephone calls
coming in and out of the al-Hada house in Sana’a were
the intelligence community’s principal window into what
bin Laden and al Qaeda were up to. The importance of the
intercepted al-Hada telephone calls remains today a
highly classified secret within the intelligence community,
which continues to insist that al-Hada be referred to only
as a “suspected terrorist facility in the Middle Easf’ in
declassified reports regarding the 9/11 intelligence
disaster.—

In January 1999, NSA intercepted a series of phone
calls to the al-Hada house. (The agency later identified
Pakistan as their point of origin.) NSA analysts found
only one item of intelligence interest in the transcripts of
these calls — references to a number of individuals

believed to be al Qaeda operatives, one of whom was a
man named Nawaf al-Hazmi. NS A did not issue any
intelligence reports concerning the contents of these
intercepts because al-Hazmi and the other individuals
mentioned in the intercept were not known to NSA’s
analysts at the time. Almost three years later, al-Hazmi
was one of the 9/11 hijackers who helped crash the
Boeing airliner into the Pentagon. That al-Hazmi
succeeded in getting into the United States using his real
name after being prominently mentioned in an intercepted
telephone call with a known al Qaeda operative is but one
of several huge mistakes made by the U.S. intelligence
community that investigators learned about only after
9/11.S4

During the summer of 1999, intercepts of Ahmed al-
Hada’s telephone calls generated reams of actionable
intelligence. In June, the State Department temporarily
closed six American embassies in Africa after intercepted
calls coming in and out of al-Hada’s house revealed that
al Qaeda operatives were in the final stages of preparing
an attack on an unidentified American embassy in Africa.
By early July, intercepted al Qaeda communications
traffic had revealed that bin Laden operatives were
preparing another operation, this time in Western Europe.
Two weeks later, more intercepted calls coming from al-
Hada’s house indicated that bin Laden was planning to hit
a major American “target of opportunity” in Albania. As a
result, planned trips to Albania by Secretary of State

Madeleine Albright and Secretary of Defense William
Cohen were hastily canceled.—

On a now-ominous note, during that summer
intercepted telephone calls coming into al-Hada’s home
mentioned for the first time a man referred to only as
“Khaled.” No doubt this was a reference to 9/11 hijacker
Khalid al-Mihdhar, who at the time was living in al-
Hada’s home along with his wife, Hoda. Because this was
the first mention of “Khaled” in an al Qaeda intercept,
NS A did not report the information, as it could not be
determined from the intercept who he was, much less
whether he was an al Qaeda operative. After 9/11,
investigators learned that a few months after this call, al-
Mihdhar caught a flight from Sana’a to Islamabad,
Pakistan, then crossed the border into Afghanistan to
undergo a special terrorist training course at al Qaeda’s
Mes Aynak training camp, which was located in an
abandoned Russian copper mine outside Kabul. Al-
Mihdhar completed the training course and returned to
Yemen via Pakistan in early December 1999.—

In December 1999, NS A intercepted another series of
telephone calls to al-Hada’s home in Sana’a, which
revealed that an “operational cadre” of al Qaeda
operatives intended to travel to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia,
in early January 2000. The transcript of the intercepted
call identified only the first names of the team — “Nawaf,”
“Salem,” and “Khalid.” Based on the context and wording
of the conversation, NS A analysts concluded that “Salem”

was most likely the younger brother of “Nawaf,” which,
as it turned out, was correct. “Salem” was a Saudi
national named Salem al-Hazmi, who was the younger
brother of Nawaf al-Hazmi. A CIA analyst who reviewed
the transcript and accompanying NS A intelligence report
surmised that “something more nefarious [was] afoot but
did nothing further with the report.”—

On January 15, 2000, two of the 9/11 hijackers
mentioned in the NS A intercept, Khalid al-Mihdhar and
Nawaf al-Hazmi, flew into Los Angeles International
Airport from Bangkok. Both men used their Saudi
passports and visas, issued in their names by the U.S.
consulate in Jidda. They spent the next two weeks holed
up in an apartment in Culver City, outside Los Angeles,
before renting an apartment at 6401 Mount Ada Road in
San Diego.—

Two months later, on March 20, NS A intercepted a
telephone call to al-Hada’s house from a man who
identified himself only as “Khaled.” Unfortunately,
because of the technology in use at the time, the agency
did not know that the call it was monitoring had
originated in the United States. NS A reported some of the
contents of the intercepted call, but not all of the details,
because the agency’s analysts did not think that it was
terrorist related. It was not until after the 9/11 attacks that
the FBI pulled al-Mihdhar’ s telephone toll records and
confirmed that the anonymous “Khaled” was none other
than al-Mihdhar, who was calling his father-in-law from

his apartment in San Diego. A 2002 congressional report
found that NSA’s inability to identify the location of the
caller was to prove disastrous because it would have
confirmed “the fact that the communications were
between individuals in the United States and suspected
terrorist facilities overseas.”—

In May and June 2000, NS A intercepted a number of
additional telephone calls to al-Hada’s house from the
anonymous “Khaled.” As before, NS A could not identify
the caller or his location. And because the calls dealt
mostly with personal matters, the agency did not report
the content or even the substance of these conversations.
Thanks to the spadework done by the 9/11 Commission,
we now know that the purpose of the call was for al-Hada
to tell his son-in-law that his wife was expecting their first
child. Upon being told by al-Hada of the birth of his son
in late May 2000, al-Mihdhar closed his San Diego bank
account, transferred the registration of his car to his
colleague Nawaf al-Hazmi, and made reservations to fly
home to Yemen. He apparently did not bother to tell his
boss in Afghanistan, al Qaeda operations chief Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed, that he was abandoning his post for
purely personal reasons. Al-Mihdhar drove to Los
Angeles on June 9 and took Lufthansa Flight 457 from
Los Angeles International Airport to Frankfurt the next
day. He was not to return to the United States for more
than a year.—

Despite NSA’s successes, it was only a matter of time

before al Qaeda finally succeeded. On October 12, 2000,
al Qaeda suicide bombers drove a speedboat laden with
high explosives into the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Co/eas
it lay at anchor in the port of Aden, Yemen, waiting to be
refueled. Seventeen sailors were killed in the blast and
another thirty-nine wounded. On the same day that the
attack on the Co/eoccurred, NS A issued an intelligence
report based on intercepts (most likely calls coming in
and out of Ahmed al-Hada’s home in Sana’a) warning
that terrorists were planning an attack in the region.
However, the NS A warning message was not received by
consumers until well after the attack had taken place.—

CHAPTER 1 2

Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory
9/11 and the Invasion of Afghanistan

What you are prepared for never happens.

^PENNSYLVANIA DUTCH PROVERB

Zero Hour Is Near

President George W. Bush, who had been inaugurated on
January 20, 2001, quickly became a devotee of NSA’s
intelligence reporting based on the briefings he had
received before becoming president.- What the president
did not know was that the agency was struggling mightily
to both modernize its decrepit infrastructure and to meet
the varied intelligence needs of its ever-growing clientele
in Washington, with NS A analysts admitting, “they had
far too many broad requirements (some 1,500 formal
ones) that covered virtually every situation and target.”
Under these adverse conditions, NS A just did not have
enough manpower and equipment resources to devote to
international terrorism. And although terrorism had been
NSA’s top priority since the August 1998 East Africa

embassy bombings, the agency’s director, General
Michael Hayden, later admitted that he had at least five
other “number one priorities,” and was unable to dedicate
sufficient personnel and equipment resources to terrorism.
The lack of resources available to cover al Qaeda and
other terrorist targets was to come back to bite the agency
in the months that followed.-
Prior to the September 11, 2001, bombings, NSA
intercepted a steadily increasing volume of al Qaeda
messages indicating that Osama bin Laden was about to
launch a major terrorist operation against an American
target. In late 2000, NSA intercepted a message in which
an al Qaeda operative reportedly boasted over the phone
that bin Laden was planning a “Hiroshima” against the
United States. Most U.S. intelligence analysts concluded
that the threat from al Qaeda was primarily to U.S.
military or diplomatic installations overseas, particularly
in the Middle East and Persian Gulf-
Beginning in May and continuing through early July
2001, NSA intercepted thirty-three separate messages
indicating that bin Laden intended to mount one or more
terrorist attacks against U.S. targets in the near future. But
the intercepts provided no specifics about the impending
operation other than that “Zero Hour was near.”-
In June, intercepts led to the arrest of two bin Laden
operatives who were planning to attack U.S. military
installations in Saudi Arabia as well as another one

planning an attack on the U.S. embassy in Paris. On June
22, U.S. military forces in the Persian Gulf and the
Middle East were once again placed on alert after NS A
intercepted a conversation between two al Qaeda
operatives in the region, which indicated that “a major
attack was imminent.” All U.S. Navy ships docked in
Bahrain, homeport of the U.S. Fifth Fleet, were ordered to
put to sea immediately.-

These NS A intercepts scared the daylights out of both
the White House’s “terrorism czar,” Richard Clarke, and
CIA director George Tenet. Tenet told Clarke, “It’s my
sixth sense, but I feel it coming. This is going to be the
big one.” On Thursday, June 28, Clarke warned National
Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice that al Qaeda activity
had “reached a crescendo,” strongly suggesting that an
attack was imminent. That same day, the CIA issued what
was called an Alert Memorandum, which stated that the
latest intelligence indicated the probability of imminent al
Qaeda attacks that would “have dramatic consequences on
governments or cause major casualties.

But many senior officials in the Bush administration did
not share Clarke and Tenet’s concerns, notably Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who distrusted the material
coming out of the U.S. intelligence community. Rumsfeld
thought this traffic might well be a “hoax” and asked
Tenet and NS A to check the veracity of the al Qaeda
intercepts. At NSA director Hayden’s request. Bill
Caches, the head of NSA’s counterterrorism office.

reviewed all the intercepts and reported that they were
genuine al Qaeda communications. -

But unbeknownst to Caches ’s analysts at NS A, most of
the 9/11 hijackers were already in the United States busy
completing their final preparations. Calls from operatives
in the United States were routed through the Ahmed al-
Hada “switchboard” in Yemen, but apparently none of
these calls were intercepted by NSA. Only after 9/11 did
the FBI obtain the telephone billing records of the
hijackers during their stay in the United States. These
records indicated that the hijackers had made a number of
phone calls to numbers known by NSA to have been
associated with al Qaeda activities, including that of al-
Hada.-

Unfortunately, NSA had taken the legal position that
intercepting calls from abroad to individuals inside the
United States was the responsibility of the FBI. NSA had
been badly burned in the past when Congress had blasted
it for illegal domestic intercepts, which had led to the
1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). NSA
could have gone to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Court (FISC) for warrants to monitor communications
between terrorist suspects in the United States and abroad
but feared this would violate U.S. laws.-

The ongoing argument about this responsibility between
NSA and the FBI created a yawning intelligence gap,
which al Qaeda easily slipped through, since there was no

effective coordination between the two agencies. One
senior NS A official admitted after the 9/11 attacks, “Our
cooperation with our foreign allies is a helluva lot better
than with the FBI.”—

While NS A and the FBI continued to squabble, the
tempo of al Qaeda intercepts mounted during the first
week of July 2001. A series of SIGINT intercepts
produced by NS A in early July allowed American and
allied intelligence services to disrupt a series of planned al
Qaeda terrorist attacks in Paris, Rome, and Istanbul. On
July 10, Tenet and the head of the CIA’s Counterterrorism
Center, J. Cofer Black, met with National Security
Advisor Rice to underline how seriously they took the
chatter being picked up by NS A. Both Tenet and Black
came away from the meeting believing that Rice did not
take their warnings seriously.—

Clarke and Tenet also encountered continuing
skepticism at the Pentagon from Rumsfeld and his deputy,
Paul Wolfowitz. Both contended that the spike in traffic
was a hoax and a diversion. Steve Cambone, the
undersecretary of defense for intelligence, asked Tenet if
he had “considered the possibility that al-Qa’ida’s threats
were just a grand deception, a clever ploy to tie up our
resources and expend our energies on a phantom enemy
that lacked both the power and the will to carry the battle
to us.”—

In August 2001, either NS A or Britain’s GCHQ

intercepted a telephone call from one of bin Laden’s chief
lieutenants, Abu Zubaida, to an al Qaeda operative
believed to have been in Pakistan. The intercept centered
on an operation that was to take place in September. At
about the same time, bin Laden telephoned an associate
inside Afghanistan and discussed the upcoming operation.
Bin Laden reportedly praised the other party to the
conversation for his role in planning the operation. For
some reason, these intercepts were reportedly never
forwarded to intelligence consumers, although this
contention is strongly denied by NS A officials.— Just
prior to the September 11, 2001, bombings, several
European intelligence services reportedly intercepted a
telephone call that bin Laden made to his wife, who was
living in Syria, asking her to return to Afghanistan
immediately.—

In the seventy-two hours before 9/11, four more NS A
intercepts suggested that a terrorist attack was imminent.
But NS A did not translate or disseminate any of them
until the day after 9/11.— In one of the two most
significant, one of the speakers said, “The big match is
about to begin.” In the other, another unknown speaker
was overheard saying that tomorrow is “zero hour.”—

A Day in Hell

On the morning of September II, 2001, nearly twenty-
two thousand NS A employees headed for the gates at Fort

Meade to begin their workday, which typically started at
seven a.m. They faced delays at the gates because the
army had recently restricted public access to the base;
security had been drastically tightened because of the
recent spate of terrorist threats against U.S. military
installations. Only four gates were open full-time (with
four more open part-time), which led to long lines of cars
waiting for clearance during the morning and afternoon
rushes.—

There was a second security cordon around what NS A
calls the Campus, a massive complex of twenty-six
separate buildings patrolled by a 388-man NS A police
force, plus an additional forty-nine buildings and
warehouses used by NS A in the area surrounding Fort
Meade. This was the equivalent of thirty-four hundred
four-bedroom homes jammed together into a single office
complex. Surrounding these buildings was the largest
parking lot in the world.— General Hayden arrived in his
office on the eighth floor of the Ops 2B building before
seven a.m. The director’s office suite was the envy of all
NS A employees, with some staff members calling it “The
Penthouse” because it was on the top floor. Not only was
the suite spacious and well appointed, but the view from
Hayden’s windows, which faced eastward, was of one of
Fort Meade’s two tree- shaded eighteen-hole golf courses.
As was his penchant, he immediately began going
through his e-mails, then turned to the large stack of
reports and messages that his executive assistant Cindy

Farkus had deposited in his in-box for his perusal.—

Elsewhere on the Campus, more than twenty thousand
NS A employees were also plowing through their “Read
File” of e-mails, cables, reports, and raw intercepts that
had come in overnight.

Then at eighty forty-six a.m. on that beautiful Tuesday
morning, a Boeing 767 jet, American Airlines Flight 11
out of Boston’s Logan International Airport, struck the
north side of the North Tower of the World Trade Center
between the ninety-fourth and ninety-eighth floors.

Within minutes of the crash, all of the major network
television and cable morning news shows had broken into
their regularly scheduled broadcasts to show their viewers
the first dramatic pictures of the burning North Tower.

Nineteen minutes later, at five past nine a.m., while
network news cameras carried the event live, another
Boeing 767 commercial jet. United Airlines Flight 175,
lazily flew across the television screen and crashed into
the South Tower of the World Trade Center. It was
obvious then that this was no accident, but the worst
terrorist attack on U.S. soil in history. Everything came to
a stop as people gathered around TV screens and watched
in horror as the Twin Towers collapsed. Those with
family or friends in New York City frantically began
trying to reach them, only to discover that virtually all of
the phone lines along the East Coast of the United States
were jammed with calls, quickly causing AT&T’s
telephone circuits going in and out of New York City to

collapse under the strain.—

At nine ten a.m., five minutes after the second crash in
New York City took place, Colonel Michael Stewart, the
army base commander of Fort Meade, ordered that his
post be locked down and declared a Threat Condition
Delta, the highest force protection alert level in the U.S.
military, which is used only in war time. No one was
allowed to enter or leave the base without proof that he or
she worked or lived there.

Base public works crews quickly placed rows of three-
foot-high concrete barriers in front of all of the closed
gates to prevent anyone from ramming their car through
one of them. The Maryland State Police closed down a
section of Route 32 that ran next to the NS A headquarters
complex, which caused a massive traffic jam.—

At nine thirty a.m. Hayden ordered that all nonessential
NS A personnel be sent home immediately and, as a
security precaution, that all remaining, mission-essential
personnel be moved out of NSA’s two black-glass office
towers into the older (and less vulnerable) three-story-
high Ops 1 office building next door. He then called his
wife, Jeanine, at their quarters on base and asked her to
check on their three grown children, all of whom lived or
worked in Washington. Before he could explain the
reason for his request, he had to hang up the phone as his
staff poured into his office with the latest news
bulletins.—

The planes crashing into the Pentagon and a deserted
field in western Pennsylvania were the final outrages —
2,973 Americans were dead, surpassing the death toll at
Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.—

Within minutes of the crash, NSA’s internal emergency
broadcast system was activated, and announcements
began to be read out over the agency’s public address
system ordering all nonessential personnel to leave the
base immediately. In a matter of minutes, the first of
thousands of NSA employees began leaving the Campus.
Within a few hours, the streets of Fort Meade resembled
those of a ghost town.—

For the rest of the day, inside the NSA operations
buildings a form of controlled chaos reigned. In room
3E099, on the top floor of Ops I, the duty officer began
calling senior NSA officials who were still at home, on
leave, or on the road on business and ordering them to
report back to work immediately. At the direction of
Richard Berardino, the chief of the National Security
Operations Center (NSOC), NSA’s watch center, his
thirty analysts and reporting officers began rapidly
compiling whatever information they could to brief
Hayden and the agency’s senior officials about what had
just transpired. Other NSOC staffers began systematically
going back over the past several days’ worth of SIGINT
reporting to see if anything had been missed that might
have given any warning of the terrorist attacks. They

found nothing.—

A now-retired NS A intelligence officer remembered the
next twenty-four hours of his life as “a day in hell.” Like
all of his colleagues, he sat in on countless video and
telephone conferences with other senior U.S. and British
intelligence officials and attended one staff meeting after
another until he reached the point where he could not
remember why he was at the meeting. When he finally
got back to his office, his secretary had a stack of
telephone messages that had to be answered. Then there
was a never-ending flow of memos and reports that he
had to read and respond to. At midnight, he decided to
leave because he was too exhausted to think coherently.
“How I got home without crashing the car, I don’t
know.”—

Nowhere was the blunt-force trauma inflicted by the
9/11 attacks felt more deeply than within NSA’s one-
hundred-man counterterrorism unit, called the
Counterterrorism Product Line, whose leader. Bill
Caches, was well qualified for the job, having served
from 1998 to 2000 as the deputy chief of NSA’s Office of
the Middle East and North Africa, where, one of his
former analysts recalled, “terror was king.”— Hayden
later described the state of morale in the NS A
counterterrorism office on September 1 1 as “emotionally
shattered.” Later that morning, Maureen Baginski, the
chief of NSA’s Signals Intelligence Directorate, visited

the counterterrorism office and held an impromptu staff
meeting, first taking the time to calm the clearly
distressed staff, then urging them to get back to work.
Recalling the days of the London blitz, some were busy
putting up blackout curtains over the office windows so as
to shield their activities from the outside world.—

What Hayden and his staff did not know was that
messages among al Qaeda officials and sympathizers that
had been intercepted by the agency within minutes of the
9/11 attacks were causing a firestorm at the White House
and the Pentagon. A number of senior Bush
administration officials, including Secretary of Defense
Rumsfeld, were convinced that the attacks were the
handiwork of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, and not al
Qaeda. Tyler Drumheller, then the head of the CIA
Clandestine Service division responsible for Europe,
noted.

Within fifteen minutes of the attacks the National
Security Agency intercepted a call from an al Qaeda
operative in Asia to a contact in a former Soviet
republic reporting the “good news” of the attacks in
New York and on the Pentagon. [CIA director
George J.] Tenet passed that report on to Rumsfeld
around midday, but according to notes taken by aides
who were with the Secretary of Defense, he
characterized the NS A report as “vague” and said
there was “no good basis for hanging haf ’ on the fact

that al Qaeda had conducted the assaults.—

The intercept that Dmmheller referred to, between a
known al Qaeda official in Afghanistan and an
unidentified person in the former Soviet republic of
Georgia, was intercepted by NS A at nine fifty-three a.m.,
less than fifteen minutes after American Airlines Flight 77
had hit the Pentagon. And despite overwhelming evidence
accumulated by the CIA that the hijackers were known al
Qaeda operatives, at two forty p.m. Rumsfeld ordered
Pentagon officials to immediately begin preparing plans
to launch retaliatory air strikes on Iraq. In the days that
followed, Rumsfeld and a number of other senior
administration officials continued to refuse to accept the
fact that the 9/11 attacks had been conducted by Osama
bin Laden’s operatives. As it turned out, this was a portent
of things to come.—

The Invasion of Afghanistan

It did not take the Bush administration long to decide
where to retaliate for the 9/11 terrorist attacks. At a
meeting of the NSC held on the morning of September
13, 2001, President Bush ordered Secretary of Defense
Rumsfeld to begin preparing a plan to attack the Taliban
regime in Afghanistan, including a range of options up to
and including an actual invasion. The name eventually
given to the operation was Enduring Freedom.—

Bush’s decision to begin preparations for an invasion of
Afghanistan put NS A director Hayden in a bind. As of
September 2001, NSA’s SIGINT coverage of Afghanistan
was not particularly good. The agency’s SIGINT
collection resources had been so tightly stretched prior to
9/11 that it had dedicated only a relatively small amount
of its resources to monitoring the communications of the
regime in Kabul, since the Taliban was not a big user of
radio or other intercep table forms of communications.
Other than a dozen or so Soviet-made shortwave radios,
the Taliban’s military formations used nothing more
sophisticated than walkie-talkies and satellite telephones.
There was no cell phone service inside Afghanistan, the
Internet had been banned by the Taliban regime as
“unholy,” and the single microwave telephone link
between Kabul and Pakistan was so unreliable that it
frustrated the NS A intercept operators trying to monitor it
as much as it did the Afghan officials who depended on it
to communicate with the outside world.—

NS A also faced a linguistic shortfall: It had only two or
three individuals on staff who could speak the principal
languages spoken in the country — Pashto, Dari, Uzbek,
and Turkmen. The agency had to rely on decoding the
diplomatic messages of countries that maintained
embassies in Kabul (the United States had no embassy in
Afghanistan), and on intelligence-sharing arrangements
with a number of foreign intelligence services.—
Completely independent of NS A, the CIA was running

a clandestine SIGINT collection effort inside Afghanistan
that was slightly more successful than NSA’s. In late
1997, the CIA had delivered to the anti-Taliban Northern
Alliance forces some off-the-shelf SIGINT intercept
equipment, which they used to monitor the radio and
walkie-talkie traffic of the Taliban and al Qaeda forces
arrayed against them in northern Afghanistan. More
equipment was surreptitiously flown in by CIA teams in
the summer of 1999. The problem was that prior to 9/11,
there was no full-time CIA liaison officer assigned to the
Northern Alliance, so the intercepts were picked up by the
CIA only sporadically, usually months after the messages
were intercepted.—

The U.S. military’s SIGINT assets were also minimal.
The army was slowly in the process of revamping its
tactical SIGINT capabilities with new equipment, but
until such time as these new systems were fielded, the
army’s field units were almost completely dependent on
NSA’s “national systems” for most of the intelligence
they got.— Linguists were in dreadfully short supply
within the U.S. military’s SIGINT units because of a lack
of recruitment and personnel retention. As of 9/11, the
army was missing half of its Arabic linguists, a critical
shortfall that obviously could not be rectified overnight
and that would have unforeseen consequences in the
months that followed.—

Right after 9/11, NSA’s principal listening post

covering the Middle East and Near East, the Gordon
Regional Security Operations Center (GRSOC) at Fort
Gordon, in Georgia, issued an urgent request for all
available Arabic linguists to augment its collection
operations. It was just one of many NS A and military
SIGINT units making such a request, so as an emergency
measure the U.S. Army decided to use Arabic linguists
from tactical units based in the United States to augment
GRSOC ’s SIGINT operations. Within weeks, twelve
Arabic linguists belonging to the SIGINT company of the
Third Armored Cavalry Regiment arrived at Fort Gordon
on a 180-day temporary deployment. It turned out that
none of the linguists could be used. They did not have the
proper security clearances and weren’t highly proficient
translators. It took almost three months to polygraph all
these soldiers and upgrade their language training to the
point where they could be used in an operational capacity
at GRSOC.22

The same problems handicapped the U.S. military’s
tactical SIGINT units destined for use in Afghanistan. The
Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, did
not even begin teaching courses in Pashto and Dari until
October 15, 2001, a week after the U.S. invasion of
Afghanistan began. At the time of the invasion, only a
tiny handful of specially trained Pashto-speaking Green
Beret SIGINT collectors assigned to the Fifth Special
Forces Group at Fort Campbell, in Kentucky, were up to
speed, and they would perform brilliantly inside

Afghanistan in the months that followed.— But that was
all that was available.

The Art of Improvisation

So as in virtually every other world crisis that had
preceded this one, NS A was forced to rapidly improvise.
Recruiters from NS A, the military, and every other branch
of the U.S. intelligence community scoured Fremont,
California, which had the largest population of Afghan
expatriates in the United States. Weeks after 9/11, several
dozen Afghan Americans from the Fremont area had
signed contracts for substantial sums of money and had
quickly been put on planes to the new front lines in the
war on terrorism.— Less than two weeks after 9/11, a
special Afghanistan Cell was created within the agency’s
SIGINT Directorate, headed by army lieutenant colonel
Ronald Stephens, who was given the thankless job of
trying to resurrect overnight NSA’s dormant SIGINT
collection effort against Afghanistan. Richard Berardino,
the head of NSOC, set up a special Afghan Desk on his
operations floor to correlate and report to the agency’s
consumers any intercepts concerning Afghanistan. Teams
of NS A and U.S. military linguists and SIGINT collectors
and analysts hastily boarded flights at Dulles International
Airport and Baltimore- Washington International Airport
bound for Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kuwait, Turkey,
Bahrain, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia to beef up NSA’s thin

presence in the region. The agency’s SIGINT satellites
and listening posts were ordered to drop less important
targets and instead train their antennae on Afghanistan.
NS A, in conjunction with its English, Canadian, and
Australian SIGINT partners, was scanning virtually every
satellite telephone call coming in and out of Afghanistan,
hoping against hope that it might catch Osama bin Laden
or one of his lieutenants talking on the phone. The
Army’s 513th Military Intelligence Brigade hastily sent
200 SIGINT and HUMINT collectors to Kuwait in late
September 2001 to augment the 120 SIGINT collectors
already there.— A navy task force was hurriedly
dispatched to the waters off the coast of Pakistan,
including a complete marine expeditionary unit, which
was essentially a reinforced marine battalion with air
support. Aboard one of the ships in that force was a large
contingent of U.S. Navy SIGINT collectors, who trained
their ship’s sophisticated radio intercept antennae on
Afghanistan once they came within range.—

No matter how many resources, human and technical,
the NS A could muster in a few weeks, it could not
produce meaningful intelligence about Afghanistan before
the beginning of U.S. military operations on October 7,
2001. The CIA worked out a way to fill the intelligence
gap by striking a deal with the Northern Alliance officials
for SIGINT collection in return for hundreds of thousands
of dollars’ worth of new and improved SIGINT collection
equipment, a deal that would pay huge dividends for the

CIA in the weeks that followed.—

On Sunday night, October 7, offensive military
operations against Afghanistan began with air strikes
against thirty-one targets, including major Taliban
military units, command posts, communications sites, and
early-warning radar and air defense units.— Not
surprisingly, the Taliban regime’s scanty communications
system collapsed under the weight of the relentless
bombing. In a matter of a couple of hours virtually every
communications site and telephone relay facility inside
Afghanistan was destroyed, including the telephone
switching center at Lataband, twenty-two miles east of
Kabul, which connected the capital city with the outside
world. A former NS A analyst recalled that from October
7 onward. Mullah Omar and his fellow Taliban leaders
could communicate with their military commanders only
by satellite telephone, which, of course, NS A could easily
intercept.—

Even though SIGINT was not much help in finding bin
Laden, the quantity and quality of NSA’s SIGINT
coverage of the Taliban rapidly improved in early
October, thanks largely to the commanders’ incessant
chattering about the most sensitive information over
satellite phones and walkie-talkies.—

From the time the U.S. air campaign began, one of the
top SIGINT targets assigned to NS A was the radio traffic
of the Taliban’s elite Fifty- fifth Brigade, which was based

in a former Afghan army camp at Rishikor, southwest of
Kabul. A detachment of the brigade was stationed in the
northern Afghan city of Mazar-i- Sharif. Widely
considered to be the best combat unit in the Taliban
military, the Fifty- fifth Brigade was comprised entirely of
foreign fighters, including a large number of Arabs who
were members of al Qaeda and had volunteered to fight
with the Taliban. The Fifty- fifth Brigade was also an easy
target for NS A because unlike other Taliban units it was
well equipped with modem radios, walkie-talkies, and
satellite phones, many of which were personally paid for
by bin Laden. All of the brigade’s officers were Arabs,
which made monitoring its radio traffic much easier since
NS A had plenty of Arabic linguists.— This was an
instance of SIGINT (employing resources like air force
AC-130H Spectre gunships, each of which carried a
contingent of Arabic linguists on board) contributing
directly to the destmction of a key enemy unit.

One of the Arabic linguists who flew on the Spectre
missions recalled, “Every time one of the brigade’s
commanders went on the air, we quickly triangulated the
location of his radio transmission and blasted the shit out
of his location with our Gatling gun . . . Once our bird
was finished chewing up the enemy positions, there
usually were no more radio transmissions heard coming
from that location.”—

The War Ends

By late October 2001, it was clear to U.S. officials that
U.S. combat troops were urgently needed on the ground
in order to defeat the Taliban and destroy the remnants of
al Qaeda in Afghanistan. It was not until October 30,
however, that a U.S. Marine Corps MEU operating from
ships in the Indian Ocean was ordered by GENICOM to
prepare for deployment to Afghanistan. It would require
more than three weeks to assemble and prepare the
necessary combat units to execute this order.—

Much of the early SIGINT effort was focused on
helping the Northern Alliance forces capture the key city
of Mazar-i- Sharif in northern Afghanistan. Finally, after
two weeks of intense fighting, Mazar-i-Sharif fell to the
Northern Alliance on November 10. With the fall of this
city, the badly battered Taliban and al Qaeda military
forces in northern Afghanistan quickly began to crumble
as the Northern Alliance forces drove rapidly southward.
Four days later, the Afghan capital of Kabul fell to the
Northern Alliance without a fight. Soon after, the
remnants of the Taliban military collapsed.

The day that Kabul fell, a radio intercept caught the
Taliban’s leader. Mullah Omar, broadcasting a message
from Kandahar exhorting what was left of his troops to
stand and fight, telling them, ‘T order you to obey your
commanders completely and not to go hither and thither.
Any person who goes hither and thither is like a
slaughtered chicken which falls and dies. Regroup

yourselves. Resist and fight . . . This fight is for Islam.”—

Such exhortations were in vain. Mullah Omar’s plea fell
on deaf ears as American fighter-bombers decimated what
was left of the Taliban and al Qaeda forces fleeing Kabul.
But mistakes occurred. On November 13, U.S. warplanes
bombed a building in Kabul thought to be a Taliban or al
Qaeda headquarters. After the bombs completely leveled
the building, a senior military official recalled, “Some cell
phone intercepts [contained] some excited or angry
exchanges between Taliban and al Qaeda members”
indicating that one or more al Qaeda leaders had been
killed in the building. U.S. officials later learned that the
building housed the Kabul offices of the al-Jazeera
television network.—

By early December, SIGINT showed that there were
few remaining organized Taliban and al Qaeda combat
units still operating inside Afghanistan. On the night of
December 6-7, Mullah Omar disappeared from Kandahar
and was not heard from again for some time. U.S.
intelligence later learned that he and his men managed to
flee southward across the border into Pakistan, where he
remains to this day. The failure of the U.S. military to
capture or kill Mullah Omar was to prove to be a major
mistake, one that we are still paying for with the lives of
our soldiers in Afghanistan.—

For the SIGINT personnel in Afghanistan, the fall of
Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban, meant that the

Taliban’s ill-conceived attempt at waging a conventional
war was over. Despite the failure to capture or kill Mullah
Omar, the Bush administration loudly and publicly
declared victory. This proved to be a very premature
statement. The Taliban not only survived, but has actually
thrived in the six years since the invasion of Afghanistan.

The Battle of Tom Bom

This didn’t mean that the war was over for the American
SIGINTers in Afghanistan. Far from it.

After the fall of Kandahar, teams of Green Beret, Delta
Force and Navy SEAL commandos, together with allied
Afghan militiamen on the U.S. payroll, began
systematically combing the mountainous and sparsely
populated southeastern part of the Afghan countryside
looking for Osama bin Laden and his fighters.
Accompanying them were a half-dozen SIGINT
collection teams, who systematically searched the
airwaves looking for any sign of bin Laden and his al
Qaeda forces.—

These SIGINT teams belonged to some of the most
secretive units in the U.S. military. There were teams of
U.S. Navy Tactical Cryptologic Support operators
belonging to Naval Security Group Activity Bahrain, who
were assigned to provide SIGINT support to the elite
commandos of SEAL Team Six. Working with the
operators from the U.S. Army’s Delta Force was a

squadron of highly skilled SIGINT specialists from the
five-hundred-man U.S. Army Security Coordination
Detachment (formerly known as the Intelligence Support
Activity), based at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, outside
Washington, D.C., whose unclassified nickname was
Grey Fox.—

Bin Laden’s whereabouts were not a secret to the
Pashtun tribesmen of southeastern Afghanistan. On
November 13, he and his forces left the city of Jalalabad
in a convoy of Toyota pickup trucks just ahead of
advancing American and Northern Alliance forces and
moved into prepared defensive positions in the Tora Bora
mountains, thirty miles southeast of Jalalabad.—

The day after Jalalabad fell, a small CIA Jawbreaker
intelligence team called Team Juliet, which was
commanded by a Green Beret officer seconded to the
CIA, was sent to the city to enlist the help of the Northern
Alliance militia commander who had taken control of it,
Hazrat Ali. A member of the Pashay tribe from northern
Afghanistan, Ali willingly signed on and was instantly put
on the CIA payroll to the tune of several hundred
thousand dollars in return for his promise to help find and
capture or kill bin Laden and his al Qaeda fighters.—

It did not take the CIA long to find bin Laden in his new
stronghold along the border with Pakistan.— The new
intelligence prompted the United States to begin a series
of major air strikes on Tora Bora on November 30. It also

prompted the U.S. Army to immediately begin planning a
search-and-destroy operation to root out bin Laden and
his fighters. But rather than assigning the mission of
destroying the al Qaeda force at Tora Bora to American
combat units, General Tommy Franks and Major General
Franklin “Buster” Hagenbeck, commander of the Tenth
Mountain Division and the senior army field commander
in Afghanistan, decided to give the job to the motley
collection of Northern Alliance militiamen in Jalalabad
commanded by Ali. This would prove to be a grave
military mistake. Ali, as one of his former Green Beret
advisers put it, was “a disaster waiting to happen.” His
troops possessed very little in the way of demonstrable
fighting ability. One thing that the CIA and the Green
Beret advisers clearly agreed upon was that All’s ragtag
militiamen were going to need substantial American
military help if they were to be successful in clearing the
Tora Bora mountains of bin Laden’s al Qaeda forces. On
December 2, a twelve-man Green Beret A-team,
designated ODA 572, arrived in Jalalabad to support All’s
attack on Tora Bora. The unit was ordered not to engage
in combat operations. Rather, its principal mission was to
call in air strikes on al Qaeda positions in the mountains.
On board the MH-53 Pace Low helicopters that ferried
ODA 571 to Jalalabad was a four-man Green Beret
SIGINT team, whose mission was to collect intelligence
and locate the source of the al Qaeda radio transmissions,
then call in air strikes on the coordinates.—

It should come as no surprise that when it came time for
Ali’s troops to attack the al Qaeda positions, the militia
commanders suddenly discovered a large number of
different reasons why they could not advance despite
repeated entreaties from their Green Beret advisers. Ali’s
locally recruited Pashtun militiamen were more willing to
fight the Northern Alliance troops ferried in by the United
States than they were to clear the Tora Bora caves of al
Qaeda fighters.—

On December 3, a CIA Jawbreaker intelligence team
operating near the town of Gardez, in eastern
Afghanistan, picked up the first “hard” intelligence that
bin Laden was in fact at Tora Bora. A U.S. Army Grey
Fox SIGINT team near Gardez intercepted some al Qaeda
walkie-talkie radio traffic that confirmed he was
personally leading the al Qaeda forces.—

Despite the accumulation of evidence from SIGINT,
which was confirmed by interrogations of captured al
Qaeda personnel after the battle was over, senior Bush
administration officials and CENTCOM officers
adamantly refused to accept, probably as a matter of
political expediency, that bin Laden was ever at Tora
Bora. The official view of CENTCOM, as voiced by the
command’s spokesman, was this: “We have never seen
anything that was convincing to us at all that Osama bin
Laden was present at any stage of Tora Bora — before,
during or after.”—

But General Franks’s version of events does not square
with the facts. SIGINT coming out of NS A and intercepts
collected by frontline U.S. military intelligence units
proved that bin Laden was indeed at Tora Bora. The
official history of the U.S. Special Operations Command
indicates that U.S. Special Forces continued to collect
hard “all-source” intelligence, most of which was coming
from SIGINT, that “corroborated” bin Laden’s presence
at Tora Bora from December 9 through December 14,
2001. Only after December 14 did the trail go dead, the
official history indicates.—

The most significant intercept of al Qaeda message
traffic occurred on December 7, when one of Hazrat Ali’s
commanders at Tora Bora said, “We have intercepted
radio messages from Kandahar to the Al Qaeda forces
here, and they ask, ‘How is the sheik?’ The reply is, ‘The
sheik [i.e., bin Laden] is fine.’

But despite repeated and increasingly urgent pleas from
Ali’s Green Beret advisers, his Afghan militiamen refused
to press home their attacks.— In retrospect, we should not
be surprised that the militiamen, whose motivations were
purely mercenary, did not aggressively move in on the
Tora Bora cave complex, or that bin Laden and his
fighters somehow managed to escape through Ali’s lines
without being detected. In any case, the evidence is now
clear that at some point prior to December 11, 2001,
Osama bin Laden and as many as eighteen hundred of his

fighters slipped away in the dead of night from the Tora
Bora mountains and made their way across the border to
the safety of northern Pakistan.— Regardless of who is
responsible, bin Laden and over a thousand of his fighters
managed to escape and are still on the loose today. —

Amazingly, despite all the evidence to the contrary, the
Pentagon refused to accept the assessments from
commanders on the ground that bin Laden was gone.
Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld told reporters that he
believed that bin Laden had not escaped and was still
trapped inside Afghanistan. On what factual basis (if any)
Rumsfeld made this claim is not known, but it ran
completely contrary to the classified reporting that he and
his staff were getting from Afghanistan at the time. This
was not the first time that the acerbic secretary of defense
was to be proved wrong.—

By December 19, even the most optimistic “true
believers” at the Pentagon and at CENTCOM
headquarters in Tampa, Florida, knew that the Tora Bora
operation had been an abysmal failure. Captain Robert
Harward, a veteran Navy SEAL and the commander of
the elite twenty-three-hundred-man U.S. -coalition Special
Forces unit Task Force K-Bar, was quoted as saying after
Tora Bora, “All of this had got us nothing. No weapons,
no ammunition, nothing.”—

But we now know that the failure to kill Osama bin
Laden and destroy his al Qaeda forces at Tora Bora was a

massive strategic blunder by the White House, the
Pentagon, and CENTCOM. Today, al Qaeda has
reconstituted itself and is back in the business of killing
Americans whenever and wherever it can. Author and
terrorism expert Peter Bergen neatly sums up the Tora
Bora fiasco this way: “Allowing Al Qaeda’s leadership to
escape from Tora Bora and fight another day has proven
to be a costly mistake. And it was only the first of
many.”—

CHAPTER 13

A Mountain out of a Molehill

NS A and the Iraqi Weapons of Mass
Destruction Scandal

The greatest derangement of the mind is to believe
in something because one wishes it to be so.

—LOUIS PASTEUR

The Hiatus

After the Battle of Tora Bora, there followed a six-month
hiatus where the attention of the White House, the U.S.
military, and the entire U.S. intelligence community,
including NS A, were largely focused on the hunt for
Osama bin Laden and the remainder of his al Qaeda
forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

But while the U.S. military and intelligence community
were focused on finding and killing bin Laden, they
ignored a new threat that was once again rearing its ugly
head — the Taliban. Within a matter of weeks of the end of
the Battle of Tora Bora, the Taliban had managed to
resurrect themselves across the border in northern

Pakistan. After the fall of Kandahar in December 2001,
between one thousand and fifteen hundred hard-core
Taliban guerrillas, including their one-eyed leader Mullah
Mohammed Omar and virtually all of his senior
commanders, slipped across the border to the safety of
northern Pakistan. No attempt was made by the U.S.
Army or the Pakistani military to prevent their exodus
from Afghanistan. Thousands more Taliban fighters
disappeared into remote mountain hiding places in
southern Afghanistan, or returned to their villages to wait
to fight another day.-

A few weeks later, in mid-January 2002, SIGINT
reporting coming out of NS A revealed that a relatively
small number of Taliban military commanders had
returned to Afghanistan and were operating along the
Afghan-Pakistani border. The intercepts showed that the
Taliban had reestablished a crude but effective
communications system using satellite telephones, which
allowed its field commanders inside Afghanistan to
communicate with their superiors in northern Pakistan.
Within days of this discovery, small teams of Taliban
fighters began launching sporadic mortar and rocket
attacks against U.S. military outposts in southern and
southeastern Afghanistan, as well as ambushing U.S.
Army patrols operating along the Afghan-Pakistani
border. By the end of January 2002, U.S. intelligence
reporting, including SIGINT, had confirmed that Taliban
guerrillas were operating in seven Afghan provinces.-

Unfortunately, the reappearance of the Taliban was
ignored by the Bush White House, which had already set
its sights on Iraq. So beginning in February 2002, and
continuing without letup through the summer of 2002,
just as Taliban guerrilla attacks were on the rise inside
Afghanistan, virtually all CIA and U.S. military
intelligence assets (including SIGINT) were withdrawn
and sent back to the United States to prepare for the
invasion of Iraq. Only a few tactical SIGINT collectors
assigned to the small army and marine contingents in
Afghanistan remained to keep track of the Taliban and al
Qaeda.-

Operation Anaconda

The precipitous withdrawal of the CIA and U.S. military
intelligence assets could not have come at a worse time.
In February 2002, just as the withdrawal of intelligence
commenced, a force of three hundred Afghan militiamen
plus CIA and Green Beret personnel left the sleepy town
of Gardez in southeastern Afghanistan to reconnoiter
reported al Qaeda positions in the nearby Shah-i-Kot
Valley. They were accompanied by a three-man Green
Beret SIGINT team, whose job was to scan the airwaves
searching for any sign that the patrol’s movements had
been detected by al Qaeda forces in the area. Near the
village of Zermat, only a few miles from the entrance to
the valley, the SIGINT personnel picked up several

walkie-talkie radio transmissions by individuals speaking
Arabic who were carefully noting the movements of the
Green Beret convoy. The gist of one of the intercepted
transmissions was: “Where was the convoy headed?”
Clearly al Qaeda fighters in the hills were closely
monitoring the patrol’s movements with the intention of
ambushing it if and when the opportunity presented itself.
The Green Beret patrol commander prudently ordered the
convoy back to the safety of Gardez. It was clear that the
enemy was guarding the entrance to the valley .-

A few weeks later, in early February, unmanned
Predator reconnaissance drones discovered what appeared
to be a small concentration of al Qaeda forces in the Shah-
i-Kot Valley. But SIGINT indicated that the size of the
enemy force might be larger than the drone’s imagery
indicated, and the intercepts revealed that there were a
number of senior al Qaeda commanders operating in the
valley, based on the number of satellite telephones
detected sending and receiving messages from the valley
floor. By mid-February, the rising volume of SIGINT
“hits” emanating from the valley indicated that the al
Qaeda force there was being reinforced with fresh troops
coming across the border. The quantity and quality of the
SIGINT, however, left much to be desired, with the
desultory number of intercepts indicating that the al
Qaeda commanders knew their communications were
being monitored. -

That month, the commander of U.S. forces in

Afghanistan, Major General Franklin Hagenbeck, despite
the bitter lessons of Vietnam, began planning a search-
and-destroy mission to wipe out the enemy force.
Operation Anaconda was supposed to have been a two-
day operation using a reinforced brigade of 1,500 troops
drawn from the Tenth Mountain Division and the 101st
Airborne Division. At the time the operation was being
planned, Hagenbeck’ s staff thought there were only 150
to 200 al Qaeda fighters in the valley. But once the
operation began on March 2, 2002, the U.S. forces found
themselves locked in a bitter battle with 2,000 entrenched
and very determined al Qaeda fighters who would not
retreat despite facing a superior force backed by airpower
and heavy artillery. -

SIGINT could not save the day. Intercepts quickly tailed
off because the al Qaeda forces in the Shah-i-Kot Valley
“were practicing systematic communications security,”
which effectively denied American SIGINT operators
access to enemy radio traffic. Another major part of the
problem was that the SIGINT intercept equipment,
designed for use against Soviet forces in Western Europe,
was poorly suited for Afghanistan. The mountainous
terrain also made SIGINT collection very difficult.
Compounding the problem, army SIGINT personnel had
to somehow hump their heavy SIGINT intercept
equipment up to the tops of the surrounding mountains or
hillsides in order to monitor what radio traffic could be
picked up.-

When Operation Anaconda finally sputtered to its
unhappy conclusion on March 18, eight American and
three Afghan soldiers were dead and another eighty
wounded. Equipment losses were much higher than
expected. American commanders claimed that the al
Qaeda forces had suffered anywhere from eight hundred
to one thousand dead, but no bodies could be found to
support these dubious claims. Hagenbeck later asserted
that “few bodies had been found because they had been
vaporized by the intense bombing by U.S. B-52s.”-
General Tommy Franks characterized Operation
Anaconda as “an absolute and unqualified success.”- But
it was a Pyrrhic victory at best because almost no
prisoners were captured, as the al Qaeda fighters preferred
to fight to the death. The few documents that were
captured offered little in the way of hard information
about Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts or details of al
Qaeda’s strength and capabilities. The United States
pulled out and the enemy moved back in. Ultimately,
nothing had been gained for all the effort.—

Hunting al Qaeda

With the end of Operation Anaconda, the focus of the
secret intelligence war against al Qaeda shifted to
Pakistan, where the NSA’s assets were few. Al Qaeda’s
communications traffic had almost completely
disappeared from the airwaves, and decrypted Pakistani

military and diplomatic communications did not prove to
be a fruitful source of intelligence because the Pakistanis
themselves did not seem to know where bin Laden was or
what he was up to. The CIA’s station in Islamabad,
headed by Robert Grenier, had some high-level phone
taps and audio surveillance sources targeted against key
Pakistani government officials, but it does not appear that
these sources were much help either.—

Ahmed al-Hada’s al Qaeda “switchboard” in Yemen,
however, was still up and running. Many of the
intercepted telephone calls made through that hub were
originating in Pakistan, where the remnants of bin
Laden’s organization had gone to ground. So, shortly after
New Year’s Day 2002, NS A, the CIA, and the U.S.
military put many of their best SIGINT collection assets
into Pakistan to try to locate the source of these al Qaeda
phone calls.

But then disaster struck when NS A suddenly lost its
access to al-Hada’s telephone traffic. The government in
Yemen discovered that al-Hada was a member of al
Qaeda, and his house was immediately placed under
surveillance, which was apparently detected. On the
evening of February 13, al-Hada, his wife, their son, and
two unidentified men made an attempt to flee. Finally
cornered in an alley after a frantic car chase involving
Yemeni security personnel, al-Hada’s son pulled a
grenade from his jacket; the grenade went off in his hand,
killing him instantly. The rest got away. With his death.

NS A lost its ability to exploit his telephone calls, which
was to prove to be an incalculable intelligence loss.—
Despite the loss of the “Yemen switchboard,” NS A and
the CIA managed to find a number of fugitive al Qaeda
leaders hiding in Pakistan, but not bin Laden. One of bin
Laden’s top lieutenants, Abu Zubaida, was arrested in the
Pakistani city of Faisalabad on the night of March 27,
2002, after NS A intercepted a number of satellite phone
calls, which CIA operatives inside Pakistan used to locate
his hideout.— Further SIGINT reporting led to the arrest
in June in Morocco of al Qaeda’s Saudi-bom chief of
operations, Fowzi Saad al-Obeidi, whose cover name
within al Qaeda was Abu Zubair al-Haili.— The following
month, intercepted phone calls enabled Pakistani security
forces to arrest a thirty-three-year-old Kenyan named
Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan, who was wanted by U.S.
authorities for his role in planning the 1998 embassy
bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.—

On August 27, an NS A listening post intercepted a
satellite telephone call placed from somewhere in
Karachi, Pakistan, to a known al Qaeda operative. NS A
analysts who studied the translation of the phone
conversation were not able to deduce much of value.— On
September 9, on an entirely unrelated matter, Pakistani
security forces bagged three Yemenis after an extended
exchange of gunfire. One of them was Ramzi bin al-
Shibh, who was well known to U.S. intelligence as one of

the key al Qaeda planners of the September 1 1 attack. The
call that NS A had monitored coming out of Karachi two
weeks earlier had come from his phone. Subsequently,
additional al Qaeda phones and laptops were found in
Pakistan and eventually turned over to NS A. The
telephone numbers and e-mail addresses in the memories
of the phones and laptops were downloaded and fed into
NSA’s burgeoning databases of numbers and addresses of
known or suspected al Qaeda members, which were under
full-time monitoring. Those telephone numbers or e-mail
addresses that were located in the United States were
passed to the FBI for investigation.—

Then in early November, NSA intercepted al Qaeda’s
Yemen operations chief as he held a lengthy conversation
on his satellite phone while driving through the desert in
the so-called Empty Quarter of eastern Yemen. Using the
locational data provided by NSA, a CIA unmanned
Predator drone was immediately dispatched from Camp
Lemonier in Djibouti to the location. The drone quickly
found the convoy just where NSA said it would be. The
Predator fired a Hellfire missile at the lead vehicle, killing
the al Qaeda official instantly. Back at the Pentagon,
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was furious when
he found out that it was the CIA and not the U.S. military
who had killed the official. “How did they get the intel?”
Rumsfeld demanded from the assembled chiefs of the
Pentagon’s intelligence agencies. NSA director Michael
Hayden admitted that the intelligence had come from

NSA. Rumsfeld’s reported response was “Why aren’t you
giving it to us?”—

The Focus Shifts to Iraq

In June 2002, NSA and the rest of the U.S. intelligence
community turned their attention away from Afghanistan
and al Qaeda and toward a new target — Iraq. After U.N.
weapons inspectors were forced out of Iraq by Saddam
Hussein in 1988, NSA’s ability to collect intelligence
there deteriorated rapidly; all of the high-grade Iraqi radio
traffic that the agency had been exploiting since
Operation Desert Storm in 1991 disappeared from the
airwaves. In 1999, there were press reports about how the
U.S. and British intelligence communities had used the
U.N. weapons inspectors to conduct sensitive SIGINT
collection operations inside Iraq, and analysts in NSA’s
Signals Intelligence Directorate concluded that these had
prompted the Iraqis to improve their already superb
communications security procedures.—

In 1998 and 1999, the Iraqis began shifting most of the
Iraqi Republican Guard and Regular Army’s radio traffic
from the airwaves to a network of one hundred thousand
lines of modem fiber-optic cables connecting Baghdad
with all of the major command centers of the Iraqi army
and air defense forces. The result was that by early 2001,
the newly laid fiber-optic cables were depriving NSA of
most of the sensitive traffic formerly carried by radio.— In

February 2001, NS A persuaded the U.S. Air Force and
the British Royal Air Force to send fighter-bombers to
attack the network as a means of forcing the Iraqis to
resume radio communications. But the NS A SIGINT
operators subsequently reported that there was not much
of significance to listen to coming from within Iraq.—

Beyond the diminishing volume of Iraqi radio traffic,
Hussein had banned the use of cell phones inside Iraq so
as to maintain a tight grip on the flow of information in
his country, and only 833,000 Iraqis out of a population of
26 million had telephones. This meant, in effect, that
NSA’s impressive capability to intercept e-mails and cell
phone calls was next to worthless when confronted by the
low-tech Iraqi target.— Every senior Iraqi military and
Republican Guard commander had a Thuraya satellite
phone for his personal use, but these insecure phones
were rarely used prior to the U.S. invasion in March 2003.
After the invasion began, Iraqi commanders stopped using
them altogether, knowing that once they activated the
phones, they were inviting an air strike or artillery
bombardment on their position within a matter of
minutes.—

So, given the lack of high-level access to Iraqi
government, diplomatic, and military communications,
the best intelligence NS A was then producing on Iraq
came from intercepting and exploiting the thousands of
Iraqi commercial and private messages coming in and out

of the country by phone and telex every month. NS A was
paying particular attention to the telephone calls, faxes,
and e-mails between representatives of various Iraqi
government ministries and private companies (some of
them fronts for the Iraqi government) and a host of
foreign companies and individuals in Europe, Asia, and
the Middle East.—

There had been high expectations among some NS A
intelligence analysts that data mining this traffic would
produce some hard evidence that Hussein was trying to
rebuild his capacity to produce weapons of mass
destruction (WMD) and ballistic missiles. These same
sorts of commercial intercepts had already produced
extremely valuable intelligence concerning Iran’s nascent
nuclear weapons research and development program.—

NSA’s commercial intercept program did produce a few
successes in Iraq. For example, in the late 1990s SIGINT
helped the U.S. government block a number of attempts
by foreign companies to violate U.N. -imposed economic
sanctions against the country.— Intelligence developed by
NS A revealed that in August 2002 a French company
called CIS Paris helped broker the sale to Iraq of twenty
tons of a Chinese-made chemical called HTPB, which
was used to make solid fuel for ballistic missiles.—
SIGINT also helped the U.S. government keep close tabs
on which foreign countries (mainly Russia and its former
republics) were doing business with Iraq.—

The net result was that as of the summer of 2002,
NSA’s SIGINT coverage of Iraq was marginal at best.
The best intelligence material that the agency was
producing at the time was on the Iraqi air force and air
defense forces, both of whom were heavy users of
electronic communications that the agency could easily
intercept. But beyond these targets, NS A was
experiencing loads of problems monitoring what was
going on inside Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. SIGINT coverage
of the Iraqi Republican Guard and the Regular Army was
fair at best. And NSA’s intelligence production on
Hussein himself, the activities of his senior Ba’ath Party
leadership, and the elite Special Republican Guard was
practically nonexistent. As Bob Woodward of the
Washington Postdi^XXy put it, “the bottom line: SIGINT
quality and quantity out of Iraq was negligible.”—

As the fall of 2002 approached and the blistering
summer in Washington began to abate, the rhetoric
coming out of the White House calling for war with Iraq
began to heat up dramatically. Virtually everyone inside
the Beltway suspected that war with Iraq was coming.
Virtually everyone within the U.S. intelligence
community knew that war with Iraq was becoming
increasingly inevitable. A senior U.S. military intelligence
official who is still on active service ruefully recalled,
“You didn’t have to be a mind reader to guess what was
about to happen. I read the newspapers. I watched the
nightly news. I listened carefully to what was being said

on the Sunday morning talk shows. I read and reread the
classified message traffic. The forces were secretly being
mustered and no one thought that we could stop it, even if
we wanted to. Everyone I talked to thought that war was
inevitable.” But as one senior White House official put it,
“the deal had not been cinched.” Only a few senior White
House and Pentagon officials knew that on August 29
President Bush had personally approved the final version
of a war plan drawn up by General Franks, the
commander of CENTCOM in Tampa, Florida, for the
invasion of Iraq.—

Bush still had to sell the war to the United Nations,
Congress, and, most important, the American people. On
September 12, he flew up to New York and addressed the
U.N. General Assembly, delivering his indictment of
Saddam Hussein, who, he asserted, had proved “only his
contempt for the United Nations and for all his pledges.
By breaking every pledge, by his deceptions and his
cruelties, Saddam Hussein has made the case against
himself” The president’s speech received polite applause
from the assembled world leaders, but fervent approval
from American politicians and the U.S. news media.—

Hayden Signs Off on the NIE

Distressing today for many former NS A officials is that a
short time after President Bush’s blistering attack on the
Iraqi regime, the agency knowingly and willingly went

along with an act that is now widely acknowledged to be
one of the saddest moments in U.S. intelligence history.
In late September 2002, NS A director Michael Hayden
signed off on a CIA-produced National Intelligence
Estimate (NIE) on Iraq’s WMD program that not only
turned out to be wrong in almost all respects, but also
served as the principal justification for the Bush
administration to lead the United States to war with Iraq.

The Top Secret Codeword NIE was titled Iraq’s
Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Virtually all its conclusions, major and minor, were later
determined to be wrong. When congressional
investigators began going through the raw intelligence
reporting on which the NIE was ostensibly based, they
discovered that there was little factual evidence to support
any of the conclusions contained in the document, except
for some very dubious reporting by defectors and refugees
and extremely unreliable information provided by exile
groups like Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress.
Only the State Department formally dissented from some
of the report’s conclusions, but its unwillingness to
endorse the NIE carried little real weight.—

Years after the NIE was issued, Hayden defended his
having signed off on the document, telling the members
of the Senate’s intelligence committee in 2005 that when
he reviewed a draft of the NIE in September 2002, his
only concern was to assess the use of SIGINT in the
estimate, and that he approved the NIE based solely on

the fact that the available SIGINT did not contradict the
estimate’s conclusions. Hayden claimed, “There was
nothing in the NIE that signals intelligence contradicted.
Signals intelligence ranged from ambiguous to
confirmatory of the conclusions in the National
Intelligence Estimate.”—

A year later, Hayden took his campaign to exonerate
himself and NS A a step further by asserting that the
SIGINT on the Iraqi WMD program was correct, but that
the CIA’s intelligence analysts who wrote the NIE had
gotten the conclusions wrong.—

What We Knew and How We Knew It

General Hayden’s version of events is somewhat different
from the recollections of the small cadre of NS A
intelligence analysts who specialized in Iraq and thought
that most of the SIGINT at their disposal was ambiguous
at best.—

Based on a combination of postmortem reports,
declassified documents, and interviews with NS A and
CIA intelligence officials, the following is what NS A
actually knew about the Iraqi WMD program at the time
that the NIE was approved, in September 2002.

The Iraqi Nuclear Weapons Program

The NIE stated with “high confidence” that Iraq had

reconstituted its nuclear weapons program since the U.N.

weapons inspectors had left Iraq in 1998, adding that Iraq
“probably will have a nuclear weapon during this
decade.” According to former NS A and CIA analysts,
NS A had collected virtually nothing that came close to
confirming this assertion prior to the NIE being issued.
The only intercepts that even remotely suggested that the
Iraqis were trying to rebuild their capacity to develop and
build nuclear weapons were a small number of very low-
level e-mails and telexes from 2000 and 2001, involving
attempts by Iraqi front companies to buy high-speed
balancing machines needed for uranium enrichment.—

In his February 5, 2003, presentation to the U.N.
Security Council, Secretary of State Colin Powell referred
to these intercepts when he said that NS A had evidence
“that Iraq front companies sought to buy machines that
can be used to balance gas centrifuge rotors. One of these
companies also had been involved in a failed effort in
2001 to smuggle aluminum tubes into Iraq.”—

The problem was that these balancing machines could
also have been destined for use in a variety of routine
commercial manufacturing operations, which is what the
Iraqis claimed they were for. Postwar investigations could
not refute Iraq’s claim that this equipment was destined
for purely civilian purposes. Interviews with former NS A
and CIA analysts confirm that there was nothing
conclusive in the NS A intercepts collected between 2000
and 2002 to indicate whether these components were
destined for use in Iraq’s purported nuclear weapons

program or for other purposes. A 2005 report on the
matter concluded, “Although signals intelligence played a
key role in some respects that we cannot discuss in an
unclassified format, on the whole it was not useful.” —

The Iraqi Chemical Weapons Program
Once again, interviews indicate that NS A provided very
little usable SIGINT concerning Iraq’s alleged chemical
weapons program. Most of the intercepts — consisting of
low-level faxes, telexes, and e-mails — concerned the
attempts of Iraqi front companies in Baghdad and
elsewhere in the Middle East to purchase precursor
chemicals from a number of companies in Eastern Europe
and the former Soviet Union, with much of the SIGINT
reporting indicating the chemical purchases were to be
used for producing fertilizers, not chemical weapons. The
problem was that the reams of intercepted material did not
specify for what purpose the chemicals were to be used,
so naturally the CIA analysts adopted a worst-case-
scenario approach and concluded that the chemical
precursors were “most likely” intended for the production
of chemical weapons.—

Interestingly, the NS A analysts interviewed could not
recall that after 1998 the agency ever collected any
intelligence information indicating that the Iraqis were
developing or had actually produced biological
weapons.—

The Robb-Silberman committee’s findings agree with
the recollections of the analysts, concluding, “Signals
Intelligence provided only minimal information regarding
Iraq’s chemical weapons programs and, due to the nature
of the sources, what was provided was of dubious quality
and therefore of questionable value.”—

Iraqi Unmanned Drones

The most contentious of the NS A SIGINT material used
in the NIE alleged that the Iraqis were developing
unmanned drones for the purpose of delivering chemical
or biological weapons to targets in the United States. This
claim was largely based on an inferential reading by the
CIA analysts of a small number of NS A intercepts
concerning Iraqi defense contractor Ibn-Fimas’s purchase
through an Australia-based middleman of mapping
software for a prototype drone from a company in Taiwan
called Advantech. Indeed, the mapping covered the
United States — and the entire rest of the world.— Once
again, the CIA opted for the worst-case scenario, basing
its conclusions on ''analysis of special intelligence^ The
phrase “special intelligence” of course refers to
SIGINT.^

Only after the end of the war did U.S. intelligence
experts get to examine prototypes of the Iraqi drone, and
they found it incapable of reaching the United States.—

The Iraqi Ballistic Missile Program
NSA’s analysis of intercepts in 2002 was correct,
however, in warning that Iraq was in the process of
producing a “large-diameter missile,” which meant a
regular ballistic missile with booster rockets attached to it
that would give the missile a range far in excess of what
the United Nations permitted Iraq to have. After the U.S.
invasion of Iraq, CIA inspection teams confirmed that two
Iraqi ballistic missiles had indeed been flight-tested
beyond the 150 kilometers permitted by the United
Nations.—

Ambiguous Is Our Business

Apart from the missile data, NSA’s intelligence analysts
had, at best, only “ambiguous” SIGINT intelligence about
whether Iraq possessed nuclear, chemical, or biological
weapons. Immediately after the NIE was issued, the
agency’s analysts began to express reservations about
their “confidence levels,” which caused no fair amount of
angst at Fort Meade, especially in General Hayden’s
office. Hayden later admitted to Congress that he was not
pleased by these reservations, which conflicted with his
assertion that SIGINT confirmed the NIE’s conclusions.
NSA’s management held firm on this position until
Congress started to look at the raw material behind the
NIE. Only then did it become clear how skimpy the
agency’s knowledge was concerning the Iraqi WMD

program.— According to a former senior CIA official, the
NS A intercepts actually revealed that “across the board
military expenditures [by the Iraqis] were down
massively. We reported that but it was not what the
bosses wanted to hear.”—

By 2007, Hayden, now the director of the CIA, had
come full circle. He finally admitted that he, like the rest
of the U.S. intelligence community, had been wrong
about the nature and extent of Iraq’s WMD program, but
with a new twist. Hayden told an interviewer from
National Public Radio,

All of the SIGINT I had, when I looked at the key
judgments of the National Intelligence Estimate, my
SIGINT ranged from ambiguous to confirmatory.
And therefore, I was — you know, and ambiguous in
our business, I told you, is kind of a state of nature.
And so, I was quite comfortable to say, yes, I agree
with the NIE. I was comfortable. I was wrong. It
turned out not to be true.—

The postmortem investigations of the U.S. intelligence
community’s performance on the Iraqi WMD issue were
unsparing in their criticism of NS A. An outside review
panel concluded that there was “virtually no useful signals
intelligence on a target that was one of the United States’
top intelligence priorities.” —

One now-retired NS A official recalled, “We looked
long and hard for any signs that the Iraqis were attempting
to smuggle into Iraq equipment needed to build nuclear,
chemical, or biological weapons, or precision machinery
that was essential to building ballistic missiles or their
guidance systems. We just never found a ‘smoking gun’
that Saddam was trying to build nukes or anything else . .
. We did find lots of stuff that was on its face very
suspicious, but nothing you could hang your hat on.”—

The Imperial Hypoerisy

On October 7, 2002, a week after the fateful NIE was
published. President Bush gave a speech, now known to
history as the “Axis of Evil” speech, that concluded with
a now-infamous line: “Facing clear evidence of peril, we
cannot wait for the final proof — the smoking gun — that
could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”—

But Bush’s speech was also notable because it based the
rationale for war on the allegation that Saddam Hussein
had, for many years, aided and abetted “the al Qaeda
terrorist network,” which shared “a common enemy — the
United States of America.” This also carried the
implication that Iraq had been partly responsible for the
9/11 terrorist attacks.—

None of this was based on solid evidence. In fact, what
little there was in NSA’s files about a relationship
between Hussein’s Iraq and al Qaeda was fragmentary.

and it did not support the notion that there was a close and
longstanding relationship between the Iraqi government
and al Qaeda.— The one tangible item that NS A did have
(which, not surprisingly, the White House and Assistant
Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith
immediately fixated on) was a report that a Jordanian-
born al Qaeda leader named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who
would later become the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq during
the Iraqi insurgency, had fled to Iran after the U.S.
invasion of Afghanistan, then received medical treatment
in Iraq in May 2002. Beginning in May 2002, NSA and
its foreign partners were monitoring al-Zarqawi ’s phone
calls, and NSA forwarded to Feith’ s office the intelligence
reporting on al-Zarqawi and what little else it had, but at
Hayden’s insistence, each of the NSA reports started with
a disclaimer stating that SIGINT “neither confirms nor
denies” that such a link existed.—

It wasn’t much, but as far as the White House and the
Pentagon were concerned, it was more than sufficient
evidence — according to Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, it
was “bulletproof’ confirmation of the ties between
Saddam Hussein’s government and al Qaeda, including
“solid evidence” that al Qaeda maintained a sizable
presence in Iraq. Rumsfeld’s allegations were based on
NSA intercepts of al-Zarqawi ’s phone calls to friends and
relatives. But according to a U.S. intelligence official, the
intercepts “provide no evidence that the suspected
terrorist [al-Zarqawi] was working with the Iraqi regime

or that he was working on a terrorist operation while he
was in Iraq.” Nonetheless, the allegations became an
article of faith for Bush administration officials.—

We Can ’t Wait for the Politieians

The passage of the Iraq War Resolution by Congress on
October 10, 2002, put NS A into high gear. On October
18, General Hayden went on NSA’s internal television
network to announce that war with Iraq was coming soon
and that NS A had to take immediate steps to get ready for
the impending invasion. He noted that “a SIGINT agency
cannot wait for a political decision” and that weather
constraints made it necessary to attack Iraq no later than
the end of March 2003.—

General Hayden ordered his agency to immediately
intensify its SIGINT collection operations against Iraq.
The onus of General Hayden’s directive fell on the
intercept operators, linguists, and intelligence analysts at
the Gordon Regional Security Operations Center at Fort
Gordon, Georgia, which was NSA’s principal producer of
intelligence on Iraq. The commander of the Fort Gordon
listening post. Colonel Daniel Dailey, was ordered to
reinforce his station’s SIGINT collection efforts against
the complete spectrum of Iraqi military and civilian
targets. Most of the intelligence information that Fort
Gordon collected in the months that followed was purely
military in nature, such as Iraqi Republican Guard

maneuvers, flight activity levels for the Iraqi air force, and
details of Iraqi air defense reactions to the accelerating
number of reconnaissance flights over northern and
southern Iraq being conducted by U.S. and British
warplanes. In addition, a twenty-nine-person special
section was formed at Fort Gordon to concentrate on
intercepting and analyzing radio traffic relating to Iraqi
WMDs.^

Powell 's Petard

In mid- January 2003, as the drumbeat for war grew ever
louder, intelligence analysts working for Pentagon policy
chief Douglas Feith began carefully combing through the
SIGINT that NS A had produced about Iraq, looking once
again for a “smoking gun” that would provide conclusive
proof that Iraq was producing WMDs, as well as evidence
that a link existed between Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and al
Qaeda. Feith was preparing a dossier of intelligence
reports that the White House wanted to use to convince
the United Nations to support the U.S. government’s call
for war with Iraq. A former NS A official recalled, “There
wasn’t much there, and there certainly was no smoking
gun, which is what these guys wanted.”—

To assist Secretary of State Powell in making his U.N.
presentation, NS A compiled a complete dossier of all
SIGINT reporting and unpublished material taken from
the agency’s databases that related directly or indirectly to

Iraq’s WMD programs and alleged links to al Qaeda. An
NS A analyst who reviewed the hefty file recalled that the
best material the agency had were a few tantalizing taped
intercepts of telephone conversations among Iraqi military
and Republican Guard officers from 2002 and 2003,
suggesting that the Iraqis were engaged in a desperate
effort to hide things from the U.N. weapons inspectors
who were due to arrive in Iraq soon. But the vague and
fragmentary intercepts were devoid of specifics. This,
however, did not prevent one senior White House official
from telling Newsweek, “Hold on to your hat. We’ve got
it.”^

When Powell gave his U.N. presentation on the
morning of February 5, he had already decided that some
of the best intelligence he had to offer came from
SIGINT. Although their content may have been
ambiguous, he thought the tapes were powerful and made
for good presentation — and they were also the kind of
material that the Iraqi government could not easily
refute.—

Powell in the end chose to use only three of the NS A
intercepts, all of which were unencrypted telephone calls
among Iraqi Republican Guard commanders. All three
were chosen because they purportedly showed that Iraqi
officials were striving to hide what were believed to be
WMDs from U.N. weapons inspectors. But as it turned
out, the intercepts were far from conclusive on this

point.—

The first NS A intercept was of a November 26, 2002,
telephone conversation between two senior Iraqi
Republican Guard officers. The conversation centered on
what was described as a “modified vehicle” that a
Republican Guard unit possessed which had previously
been “evacuated.” The vehicle was from the al-Kindi
company, which Powell alleged was “well known” to be
involved in the development of WMDs. It turns out that
there had been considerable controversy within the U.S.
intelligence community about the meaning of this NS A
intercept. Before Powell traveled to New York City to
give his presentation at the U.N., Vice President Dick
Cheney and his staff had strongly argued that the import
of the intercept was that the “modified vehicles” that the
Iraqis were trying to hide had to be associated with long-
range ballistic missiles because that was what al-Kindi
historically had specialized in.—

But declassified documents show that the State
Department argued that because the intercept gave no
details about the “modified vehicles,” the intercept could
only be used to demonstrate that the Iraqis were trying to
hide “something” from the returning U.N. weapons
inspectors. What they were hiding nobody could say. A
former NS A analyst at the time agreed with the State
Department’s position, saying, “It could have been a
souped-up Volkswagen Beetle that they were talking
about for all we know.” The State Department also

disagreed with Cheney and the CIA’s conclusion that the
“modified vehicles” were most likely associated with
long-range ballistic missiles because other portions of the
intercept that were not played for the U.N. Security
Council indicated that they were used in conjunction with
more mundane surface-to-air missiles.— Only after
Baghdad fell in April 2003 did U.S. intelligence officials
learn the truth about what the two Republican Guard
officers had been talking about. Captured documents and
interrogations of Iraqi officials confirmed that the much
ballyhooed “modified vehicles” were actually trailers
modified by al-Kindi that carried equipment used by the
Iraqi Republican Guard to make hydrogen gas to fill
weather balloons, which Iraqi artillery units used to
measure wind strength and direction for targeting
purposes.—

The second intercept that Powell used, dated January
30, 2003, was again a telephone conversation between
two Republican Guard officers, where the senior officer
ordered the subordinate to “inspecf ’ (not “clean out,” as
Powell said) portions of the ammunition depot that he
commanded. The conversation referred to “forbidden
ammunition,” but did not indicate that there was any
“forbidden ammo” actually at the facility. The order
simply was to inspect his depot for anything relating to
“forbidden ammo.” Powell made much of the fact that the
senior officer ordered the subordinate to “destroy the
message” after he had carried out the instructions

contained therein. But again, there was considerable
doubt within the U.S. intelligence community about the
actual meaning of this intercepted message. According to
a senior government official interviewed by the
Washington Post, “U.S. intelligence does not know
whether there was ‘forbidden ammo’ at the site where the
radio message was received. The tape recording was
included in Powell’s presentation to show that there was
concern such ammo could turn up.”—

The third message, intercepted “several weeks before”
Powell’s presentation, in mid- January 2003, was a
telephone conversation between two officers of the
Second Republican Guard Corps in southern Iraq. The
crux of the intercept was that the senior officer on the call
told his subordinate to write down the following order:
“Remove the expression ‘nerve agents’ wherever it comes
up in the wireless instructions.” No copies of the wireless
instruction in question were presented by Powell. Taken
in isolation, and out of context, the intercept suggested
that the Iraqis were trying to hide any references to nerve
agents in their files. But as a now-retired State
Department intelligence official put it, “We tried to argue
to anyone who would listen that this snippet didn’t prove
anything other than the fact that the Iraqis were trying to
purge their files. But no one wanted to listen to our
contrarian viewpoint, so we were ignored.”—

It was not until after the successful conclusion of the
U.S. invasion of Iraq that interrogators from the CIA and

the U.S. military finally learned what all three of the
intercepts were referring to. In the fall of 2002, Hussein,
under enormous pressure from the French and Russian
governments, agreed to comply with U.N. demands that
he let weapons inspectors back into the country. At the
same time, he issued an order to his military commanders
to destroy any and all records relating to Iraq’s previous
WMD programs “in order not to give President Bush any
excuses to start a war.” As the Iraqis hurriedly began
sanitizing their records of anything relating to their long-
dormant WMD program in advance of the arrival of the
U.N. weapons inspectors, a few of the instructions from
Baghdad to field commanders were intercepted by NS A
and led the intelligence community to conclude that the
Iraqis were trying to hide their WMDs. The Iraqis’
attempt to “pretty up” their files so that the inspectors
would find nothing that would give the Bush
administration a casus belli backfired badly, providing the
administration with exactly what Hussein had wanted to
avoid at all costs — an excuse to invade Iraq.—

But there was a price to be paid for making the
intercepts public. NS A had argued strenuously against it,
but to no avail. It did not take the Iraqis or al Qaeda in
Iraq long to take appropriate countermeasures. Two
weeks after Secretary Powell’s speech, al Qaeda leader al-
Zarqawi suddenly stopped using his cell phone, killing off
a vitally important source of intelligence.—

Then on March 18, 2003, only a few days before the

U.S. invasion of Iraq was to begin, the Iraqi government
suddenly switched off all telephone service across Iraq,
and the use of satellite and mobile phones was
specifically banned by the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior,
even by foreign reporters based in Baghdad. This closed
off the last low-level sources of SIGINT that were then
available to NS A about what was going on inside Iraq.—

Conclusions

The performance of the U.S. intelligence community prior
to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 was a complete and
unmitigated disaster at all levels. The distinguished
British defense correspondent and military historian Max
Hastings described the Iraqi WMD intelligence fiasco as
“the greatest failure of western intelligence in modem
times.”—

NS A fared better than the CIA and the rest of the U.S.
intelligence community in the subsequent congressional
investigations, but only because so much of the criticism
of the agency’s performance was kept secret, including
the fact that the fiber-optic network in Iraq had made it
impossible for NS A to perform its mission. This was a
chilling reminder that changes in telecommunications
technology were making it increasingly difficult for NS A
to do its job.—

CHAPTER 1 4

The Dark Victory
NS A and the Invasion of Iraq:
March-April 2003

Rejoice! We conquer!

^PHIDIPPIDES, GREEK MESSENGER AFTER

BATTLE OF MARATHON

The March-April 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq,
designated Operation Iraqi Freedom, is a case study of
NSA’s massive SIGINT collection system mostly
performing well, but not completely. But as will be seen
in this chapter, the agency’s long-standing problem of not
being able to quickly and efficiently process, analyze, and
disseminate the intelligence that it collected showed up
repeatedly in the lead-up to and during the invasion itself
And unfortunately, much of the intelligence NS A
produced never made its way to the frontline army and
marine field commanders who needed it the most.

NSA ’S Iraqi Surge Begins

On Tuesday, February 11, 2003, NSA director Michael
Hayden issued a secret directive called a Director’s Intent
to all NSA components, warning that war with Iraq was
near. ‘T intend to conduct a SIGINT and Information
Assurance operation for the Iraq campaign that will meet
the combatant commanders’ objectives of shock, speed
and awe while also providing policy makers information
that is actionable and timely. Success will be measured by
our ability to limit the conflict geographically, secure
regime change in Iraq, and dismantle Iraqi weapons of
mass destruction.” -

Within hours, the agency’s sixty thousand military and
civilian personnel began implementing long-standing
NSA war plans to provide SIGINT support to General
Tommy Franks’s CENTCOM for the upcoming invasion
of Iraq.- NSA then sent out classified “war warning”
messages to its listening posts covering Iraq, ordering
them to immediately ramp up their SIGINT collection
efforts. - An Iraq Operational Cell was created within the
National Security Operations Center (NSOC) in order to
manage NSA’s SIGINT support for Operation Iraqi
Freedom, and from this unit finished intelligence was
disseminated in electronic form to cleared intelligence
consumers in Washington and the Persian Gulf.- In
addition. Brigadier General Richard Zahner, NSA’s
associate deputy director of operations for military

support, flew down to CENTCOM headquarters in
Florida to coordinate NSA’s SIGINT support for General
Franks’s combat troops. -

Hundreds of military reserve and National Guard
SIGINT operators and analysts were recalled to active
duty. By the beginning of March 2003, 98 percent of all
army reserves and 45 percent of all National Guard
intelligence units were on active duty either in the United
States or in the Persian Gulf. Beginning in January 2003,
and continuing right up to the invasion, nearly five
hundred army reserve and National Guard personnel,
including dozens of Arabic linguists, began arriving by
airplane and train at Fort Gordon’s Regional SIGINT
Operations Center (GRSOC) to reinforce its SIGINT
collection and analytic capabilities. -

GRSOC ’s primary task was to thoroughly map the
locations and track the activities of Saddam Hussein’s
seventy-thousand-man Republican Guard. Consisting of
six divisions equipped with nine hundred Russian-made
T-62 and T-72 tanks, the Republican Guard was
nominally headed by Hussein’s thirty-six-year-old son,
Qusay, although its actual military commander was its
chief of staff, Fieutenant General Sayf al-Din Fulayyih
Hassan Taha al-Rawi, a staunch Hussein loyalist and
competent field commander who had been severely
wounded in the 1980s while leading a counterattack
against Iranian forces.-

NS A wanted GRSOC to monitor 24-7 all radio and
satellite telephone traffic coming in and out of the
headquarters of the Second Republican Guard Corps at
Salman Pak, south of Baghdad, which was commanded
by one of the Republican Guard’s best field commanders,
Lieutenant General Raad Majid al-Hamdani, who was
responsible for protecting the southern approaches to
Baghdad. Al-Hamdani ’s corps controlled the Medina
Division, at As Suwayrah, thirty-five miles southeast of
Baghdad; the Al-Nida Division, at Baquba, thirty-five
miles northeast of Baghdad; the Baghdad Division, at A1
Kut, one hundred miles southeast of Baghdad; and the
Third Special Forces Brigade, at the Al-Rasheed military
airfield on the southern outskirts of Baghdad.-

NSA’s Bad Aibling Station, in southern Germany,
would provide SIGINT coverage of the activities of the
ten Iraqi combat divisions deployed in northern Iraq. This
coverage was deemed essential because CENTCOM
planned for the U.S. Army’s Fourth Infantry Division to
land in Turkey and invade northern Iraq. But the plan was
discarded when the Turkish government refused to allow
this.-

However, NSA’s most urgent SIGINT assignment was
finding and tracking Iraqi ballistic missile units, which the
Iraqis supposedly could use to deliver chemical or
biological weapons. NS A simply couldn’t come up with
intercepts reliably associated with these units.—

The U.S. Air Force war planners wanted every detail
about the offensive operations of the Iraqi air force’s MiG
fighters. NS A, however, picked up such limited traffic
from enemy airfields that it informed U.S. Air Force war
planners that the Iraqi air force’s estimated 325 combat
aircraft were not flying at all. No U.S. Air Force or
coalition aircraft were lost or even damaged in action by
Iraqi MiG fighters.

Ever since Operation Desert Shield/Storm in 1990-
1991, NS A had closely monitored the Iraqi air defense
forces. This coverage was now essential if the first air
strikes inside Iraq were to be successful. SIGINT satellites
scooped up all micro wave relay traffic throughout Iraq.
U-2 and RC-I35 reconnaissance aircraft equipped with
sensitive SIGINT equipment constantly orbited over
northern Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, intercepting the
communications between Iraqi SAM and antiaircraft gun
battery commanders. Right up to the invasion, intercept
operators at Fort Gordon and Bad Aibling Station
successfully monitored Iraqi radar operators tracking
allied aircraft flying training or reconnaissance missions
along the Iraqi borders, and NS A intercepted and
analyzed the computer-to-computer data traffic between
the Iraqi air defense operations center in Baghdad and its
subordinate sector operations centers at Taji, Kirkuk, H-3,
and Talil air bases. The Iraqi air defense traffic showed
that Iraqi radar operators were paying close attention to
U.S. Air Force flight activity over Kuwait and Turkey.—

NS A was also responsible for helping the CIA and the
FBI identify Iraqi agents operating in the United States
and abroad who were tasked with launching terrorist
attacks on American targets. The name given to this effort
was Operation Imminent Horizon. Based in part on
material gathered by NS A, on March 5 two diplomats at
Iraq’s U.N. mission were declared personae non gratae
and given forty-eight hours to leave the country.—

But Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was not the only target that
came under closer scrutiny by NS A and its foreign
partners after General Hayden signed his war directive. In
January 2003, NS A was tasked by the White House to
monitor the communications of a surprisingly large
number of international organizations, all of whom were
key players standing in the way of the Bush
administration’s strenuous efforts to convince the world
community to join the U.S. and Britain and its so-called
Coalition of the Willing in an invasion of Iraq.

NS A and Britain’s GCHQ began intercepting all of
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s telephone calls and
e-mails, and a special eavesdropping device was
surreptitiously planted inside Annan’s office suite on the
thirty-eighth floor of the U.N. headquarters building in
New York City; it recorded all of the private
conversations held in his office. The U.S. and British
governments were both concerned that Annan was
personally opposed to the United Nations’ approving a
resolution calling for war against Iraq.— At the same time.

NS A and GCHQ mounted a joint “surge operation” to
intensively monitor the communications traffic of
governments with seats on the U.N. Security Council in
order to determine whether they would vote for the
resolution. Included were Chile, Pakistan, Angola,
Guinea, Cameroon, and Bulgaria, all of whom were then
being intensively lobbied to vote with the United States
and Britain. A GCHQ linguist named Katherine Gun, who
was shocked at what the United States and Britain were
up to, confided the details to the British newspaper the
Observer, which broke the story on March 2. A leak
investigation ensued, and Gun was subsequently fired
from her job after she was arrested for violating the
Official Secrets Act.—

As of January, NS A was also intercepting the
communications traffic (calls, e-mails, cables, etc.) of the
United Nations’ chief weapons inspector. Dr. Hans Blix,
and his deputies. According to Bob Woodward of the
Washington Post, President Bush was convinced that the
Swedish diplomat was saying one thing in public and
quite another privately in the intercepted UNMOVIC
message traffic that Bush, as he interpreted it, was getting
from NS A. —NS A was also monitoring the telephone calls
and e-mails of Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, the director-
general of the United Nations’ International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA), because of the White House’s
intense dislike of his agency’s policies with regard to Iraq,
which almost always ran contrary to what the Bush

administration wanted.—

GENICOM Prepares

On January 19, 2003, six days after General Hayden
ordered NS A to war alert status. General Franks and 350
members of his staff flew to Camp As Sayliyah in Qatar,
which was to serve as CENTCOM’s forward headquarters
for the invasion. Accompanying them was a small team of
NS A liaison officials and communicators who became
known as the CENTCOM Cryptologic Services Group.

In early March, as the final preparations for the invasion
of Iraq were being made, small teams of U.S. Army,
Marine Corps, and British SIGINT intercept personnel
were secretly deployed, with the help of the Kuwaiti
border police, to the Mutla Ridge, the heights that run
along the full length of the Kuwaiti border with Iraq, to
monitor the activities of the Iraqi army. One marine radio
intercept team from the First Radio Battalion was moved
up to border post 11 on the Shatt al-Arab waterway to
listen to radio traffic coming from Iraqi forces deployed
across the way in the port city of Umm Qasr.—

One of NSA’s highest priorities was to look for any
defensive preparations by the Iraqi Regular Army and the
Republican Guard in southern Iraq. In January and
February, SIGINT indicated that Iraqi forces were making
surprisingly few preparations for war, despite the fact that
the imminent invasion was front-page news in the United

States and Western Europe. Radio intercepts revealed that
the Iraqis were not moving any combat units, preparing
defensive positions, making logistical preparations, or
holding any training exercises. Radio traffic volume
remained constant but very light, and the content of the
low-level housekeeping radio traffic that NS A could
access was amazingly routine.—

Through the end of January, no movements by Iraqi
Republican Guard units deployed south of Baghdad were
detected in SIGINT. It was not until late February that
SIGINT began to note the Iraqi army and the Republican
Guard hastily redeploying some of their forces. In mid-
February, two weak Regular Army infantry brigades were
moved to guard Umm Qasr and the massive petroleum
production center of Rumailah. Then in late February,
SIGINT and satellite reconnaissance detected two
Republican Guard divisions — the Adnan Division and the
Nebuchadnezzar Division — ^being hastily moved from
their home bases in Mosul and Kirkuk, in northern Iraq,
southward toward Saddam Hussein’s hometown of
Tikrit.—

Then an eerie stillness took over the airwaves as the
Iraqi military went to near-complete radio silence, which
in military parlance is called emission control
(EMCON).— Even the Iraqi observation posts situated
along the border with Kuwait reduced their radio traffic to
almost nil. On Tuesday, March 18, only hours before the

U.S. invasion was to begin, the Iraqi government
switched off all telephone service across the country.—

The War Begins with a Bust

At about three p.m. EST on Wednesday, March 19, 2003,
the CIA received a FLASH-precedence intelligence
message from an agent asset inside Iraq known as
Rockstar containing the reported location of Saddam
Hussein. CIA director George Tenet immediately
informed Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his
deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, as well as the White House. An
hour later, when Rumsfeld and Tenet arrived at the White
House for an emergency meeting with President Bush and
his senior national security advisers. Tenet stated that
Hussein was meeting with his senior commanders at an
isolated house in southern Baghdad called the Dora Farms
and would remain there for at least several hours. At
seven twelve p.m.. Bush signed the order to bomb the
house and kill Hussein.—

A little more than two hours later, at five thirty-three
a.m. Baghdad time, March 20, two U.S. Air Force F-117
stealth fighters dropped four two-thousand-pound JDAM
“bunker buster” bombs on the Dora Farms complex.

Jubilation broke out throughout the U.S. intelligence
community when a few sketchy intercepts of Iraqi civil
defense radio traffic indicated that some high-ranking
Iraqi government official had been killed. But it turned

out that there was no bunker at the Dora Farms, and
Saddam Hussein had not been anywhere near the place
when the bombs were dropped.—

At the exact same moment that the F-1 17s released their
bombs on the Dora Farms, the first of forty- five
Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from six U.S. Navy
warships in the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea began
hitting high-priority Iraqi government buildings and
military command posts in and around Baghdad, such as
the Ministry of Defense building, the headquarters of the
Iraqi Republican Guard, and the compound in east
Baghdad that housed the Iraqi intelligence service.

At ten fifteen p.m. EST, President Bush announced on
all the major TV networks that the war with Iraq had
begun.

The Early Stages of Operation Iraqi

Freedom

At six p.m. Baghdad time, March 20, a little more than
twelve hours after the Dora Farms attack, the U.S. air
campaign against Iraq began. Over the next twenty-four
hours, American and British warplanes flew a staggering
seventeen hundred combat sorties against hundreds of
targets inside Iraq. At the same time, U.S. Navy warships
and U.S. Air Force B-52 bombers launched 504 cruise
missiles, which systematically took out dozens of
Hussein’s presidential palaces, military command centers.

and large military garrisons in the most heavily defended
parts of Iraq, particularly in and around Baghdad itself—

American reporters covering the air assault and cruise
missile attacks from their hotel balconies in downtown
Baghdad repeatedly used the phrase “shock and awe,”
popularized by Donald Rumsfeld in 1999, to describe the
pyrotechnics. Months later, journalists referred to the
initial air campaign attacks as “shucks and awww” when
it became clear that the massive (and expensive) air
strikes had done only minimal damage to the Iraqi war
machine.

NS A, however, was tasked with performing immediate
assessments on the effectiveness of the air strikes and
cruise missile attacks in taking out the Iraqi air defense
system. An air force Arabic linguist recalled that his job
was to monitor the known radio frequencies used by Iraqi
air defense command posts in southern and central Iraq.
One by one, during the predawn hours of March 20, all of
the radio frequencies he was monitoring went silent, some
in mid-transmission, indicating that the fighter-bombers
and cruise missiles had done their job. By dawn, SIGINT,
including intercepts translated by Arabic linguists aboard
U.S. Air Force RC-135 Rivet Joint and U.S. Navy EP-3E
Aries reconnaissance aircraft, confirmed that virtually all
of the Iraqi air defense system’s sector operations centers
were out of commission.—

In the days that followed, every time an Iraqi radar
operator was brave (or foolish) enough to activate his

radar system, within minutes the site’s radar emissions
were detected and located by one of the Rivet Joint or
Aries reconnaissance aircraft orbiting over Kuwait, which
promptly directed fighter-bombers to destroy the site. By
the time Operation Iraqi Freedom was over three weeks
later, SIGINT had directly contributed to the destruction
of 95 percent of the Iraqi air defense system — which was
a remarkable accomplishment by any measure.—

SIGINT and the Ground War

At ten fifteen a.m. on March 20, hours after the air
campaign began, the Iraqis began sporadically firing their
homegrown version of the Russian Scud ballistic missile
and Chinese-made Seersucker cruise missiles at U.S.
military positions inside Kuwait. Some of these unwieldy
and inaccurate missiles were aimed at Camp Commando
in northern Kuwait, which was where the marine First
Radio Battalion had its main operations site. The missile
detonations rocked the camp, but little damage was done.
Nonetheless, it shook up the American troops and served
to remind them that there was a real war going on just a
few miles away.—

Shortly after six p.m., an Iraqi patrol boat crossed over
from the Iraqi side of the Shatt al-Arab waterway and
opened fire on a marine radio intercept team deployed on
the Kuwaiti-Iraqi border. At almost exactly the same time,
Iraqi mortar fire began falling on the marines position.

and the marines spotted Iraqi infantrymen just across the
border advancing toward them. The marine SIGINT
operators radioed their headquarters and urgently
requested covering fire and immediate extraction. While
marine artillery units blasted the enemy with massive
counter-battery fire, a helicopter flew in and successfully
extracted the marine SIGINT team without taking any
casualties.—

That morning, satellite imagery had indicated that the
Iraqis were ready to destroy the huge Rumailah oil field,
in southern Iraq. This new intelligence led General Franks
to move up the start time of the ground offensive. At nine
P.M., hundreds of U.S. and British artillery pieces and
missile launchers opened fire on the thin screen of Iraqi
border guard posts strung out along the border with
Kuwait — and the posts’ radios went silent, some in
midtransmission, as they were destroyed.— After the
barrage ended, thousands of American and British tanks,
armored personnel carriers, and support vehicles crossed
over the border into Iraq. The invasion had begun.

American and British ground troops advanced steadily
into the country without any appreciable opposition. In
the first twenty- four hours, elements of the U.S. Army’s
Third Infantry Division advanced one hundred miles,
arriving on the outskirts of the city of Nasiriyah by the
end of March 21. To the east, the First Marine Division
seized the Rumailah oil fields on March 2 1 and destroyed
the Iraqi Fifty-first Mechanized Division by the end of the

following day.

Across the border in Kuwait, American and British
SIGINT operators were flummoxed by the near total
absence of the Iraqi military radio traffic that should have
been part of a forceful Iraqi response. Moreover, Iraqi
divisions did not move from their peacetime bases, and
there was no evidence that Hussein’s army had any
intention of meeting coalition forces head-on.—

The Iraqi army and the Fedayeen Saddam paramilitary
forces did not use their radios much to communicate
during the initial phases of the invasion. This not only
prevented Iraqi forces from coordinating attacks on and
mounting resistance to coalition forces — but also
degraded the value of SIGINT as a source for intelligence
during the first couple of days of the invasion.—

In the British sector on the extreme right flank, SIGINT
played a relatively small role in the successful taking of
the key city of Basra by the British First Armored
Division — by giving the British a very accurate picture of
the formidable Iraqi forces facing them.—

According to British military officials, high-level
strategic intelligence derived from SIGINT on Iraqi
military strength and capabilities was hard to come by,
but intercepted Iraqi tactical radio traffic proved to be an
important source for British field commanders.— During
the course of the First Armored Division’s advance,
SIGINT provided some warnings of impending ambushes

by Fedayeen Saddam guerrillas as well as information
concerning the movements and activities of key Iraqi
regime leaders inside Basra itself— But no radio
intercepts detected signs that the Shi’ite inhabitants of the
city had risen up against Hussein’s troops.—

The same situation existed in the American sector to the
west. One of the more interesting battles where SIGINT
played a meaningful role was for Nasiriyah, in
southeastern Iraq. With a population of 250,000 people,
most of whom were Shi’ites, the city was the linchpin of
the Iraqi army’s defense of southern Iraq. Garrisoning
Nasiriyah was the Iraqi Eleventh Infantry Division, and
the city had been reinforced by Ba’ath Party A1 Quds
militiamen and Fedayeen Saddam guerrillas. Just outside
the city was the vitally important Tallil Air Base, which
was the headquarters of all air defense forces in southern
Iraq. The CIA and U.S. military intelligence believed that
the Eleventh Infantry Division would put up minimal
resistance since it was comprised primarily of Shi’ite
troops who had no love for Saddam Hussein’s regime.—
But the Iraqis defended the city fiercely. For the next
fifteen days, the Iraqi army’s Forty-fifth Brigade,
bolstered by A1 Quds Party militiamen and Fedayeen
Saddam guerrillas, fought the numerically superior U.S.
Marines to a standstill before finally being overcome.
Radio intercepts from the marine Second Radio Battalion
on March 26 indicated a buildup of two thousand Iraqi

soldiers and Fedayeen Saddam guerrillas who were
preparing to launch a counterattack on U.S. Marines
trying to clear the city. Marine artillery units immediately
hit the Iraqi troops with a barrage of high-explosive
antipersonnel shells, killing two hundred and breaking up
the planned counterattack before it even began.—

The same thing was taking place further to the north in
front of the city of Najaf, where Fedayeen Saddam
paramilitaries and A1 Quds militiamen continued to hold
the city against Major General David Petraeus’s 101st
Airborne Division. SIGINT provided Petraeus with some
valuable intelligence about the strength and fighting
condition of the Iraqi forces inside the embattled city.
This reportedly included intercepted messages from the
Iraqi commander of the Najaf civilian militia to Baghdad
requesting reinforcements because he and more than one
thousand civilian militiamen were surrounded by U.S.
troops.—

Taking On the Medina Division

The battles between the U.S. Army Third Infantry
Division and the Republican Guard Medina Division
south of Baghdad in late March and early April 2003
proved to be the decisive events in the war. The
importance of defeating the Medina Division was
immense. British prime minister Tony Blair had predicted
that the impending battle the division would be a “crucial

moment” in the war.— Even before the invasion began,
U.S. military planners had determined that the inevitable
battle with the Medina Division would be critical to the
successful outcome of the war because it was by far the
best Iraqi combat unit guarding the southern approaches
to Baghdad. A senior U.S. intelligence officer, who at the
time was working in the CENTCOM intelligence shop in
Qatar, said, “All roads to Baghdad led through the
Medina Division. We had to destroy it to take Baghdad
and win the war.”—

Once the invasion began, every radio transmission and
electronic emission coming from the units of the Medina
Division was closely monitored by NS A. The SIGINT
operators at GRSOC monitored the radio traffic coming in
and out of the division’s headquarters because of
apprehensions created by SIGINT and foreign intelligence
reports that the division had already been issued artillery
shells filled with either mustard gas or nerve agents.— We
now know, of course, that Iraq did not have any chemical
weapons in its arsenal, so one of the enduring mysteries
of Operation Iraqi Freedom is what the source of these
wildly inaccurate intelligence reports was.

While NS A kept the intelligence staffs in Kuwait well
supplied with the latest intelligence about the Medina
Division, the responsibility for providing intelligence
support to the U.S. Army’s main combat unit on the
battlefield, the Third Infantry Division, fell to its own

integral intelligence unit, the 103rd Military Intelligence
Battalion, which had its own SIGINT collection company.
It used a SIGINT collection system called Prophet, which
was basically an unarmored Humvee vehicle with two
radio intercept personnel sitting in the back, who got their
intercepts from a twenty-three-foot-high telescoping
antenna mounted on the roof of the vehicle. Prophet
intercepts were beamed directly to the 103rd MI
Battalion’s command center, then sent via satellite to
GRSOC, where Arabic linguists translated them and
beamed the results back to the Third Infantry Division’s
analysts in Iraq. But the Third Infantry Division received
its complement of Prophet systems only a few weeks
before the invasion of Iraq began, meaning that the
division’s radio intercept operators were still learning how
to use the system when the war began.—

SIGINT played an important role in the first, abortive
attack on the Medina Division in the Karbala Gap by a
force of attack helicopters on the night of March 23-24.
That night, the Eleventh Attack Helicopter Regiment,
equipped with thirty-two AH-64D Apache attack
helicopters, launched a deep airborne strike that was
designed to destroy the Second Armored Brigade of the
Medina Division, which SIGINT had pinpointed as
deployed in defensive positions north of the town of A1
Hillal in the Karbala Gap. However, the Iraqis were
waiting, and they destroyed one Apache and captured the
two pilots. They also damaged the thirty-one other

helicopters. Making matters worse, the attack failed to
engage, much less destroy, the Medina Division. The U.S.
Army’s official history of the war describes the abortive
attack as “the darkest day” of the war.—

On the evening of March 23, SIGINT intercepted
ominous messages indicating that the Medina Division
had been warned that an attack on its positions was
imminent. But once the attack was under way on the
morning of March 24, SIGINT operators intercepted
dozens of Iraqi radio messages indicating that the
Eleventh Attack Helicopter Regiment had indeed flown
right into a carefully orchestrated “flak trap.”— The
commander of the U.S. Army’s Fifth Corps, Lieutenant
General William Wallace, admitted after the war, “We
found out, subsequent to the attack, based on some
intelligence reports, that apparently both the location of
our attack aviation assembly areas and the fact that we
were moving out of those assembly areas in the attack
was announced to the enemy’s air defense personnel by
an Iraqi observer, thought to be a major general, who was
located someplace in the town of An-Najaf using a
cellular telephone. In fact, he used it to speed-dial a
number of Iraqi air defenders. As our attack aviation
approached the attack positions, they came under intense
enemy fire.”—

Hours after the abortive attack by the Apache
helicopters, a trio of army RC-12 Guardrail SIGINT

aircraft belonging to the Fifteenth Military Intelligence
Battalion, based in Kuwait, flew a special reconnaissance
mission over the Karbala Gap looking for the Medina
Division and found it positioned around the towns of
Karbala, A1 Hillal, and A1 Haswah. Using the coordinates
provided by the Guardrail aircraft, U.S. Army artillery
units immediately launched a barrage of lethal multiple-
launch rocket system (MLRS) missiles at the Iraqi
positions, with COMINT intercepts indicating that the
missiles had caused widespread damage.—

For the next three days, a ferocious sandstorm brought
all operations to a halt. During it, on the night of March
25-26, the Iraqis attempted to move up elements of five
Republican Guard divisions to positions south of
Baghdad. These moves were quickly detected by SIGINT
and other technical sensors, which led to a seemingly
never-ending series of air attacks on the Republican
Guards desperately trying to make their way to the front.
With the Iraqi air defense system almost completely
flattened, American and British fighter-bombers were able
to clobber Iraqi military targets with impunity within
minutes after SIGINT fingered them. By the end of the
war, more than four hundred air strikes on Iraqi military
targets had been flown based solely on SIGINT intercepts
coming out of NS A.—

By March 28, Major General Buford Blount Ilfs Third
Infantry Division was ready to take on the Medina
Division. The upcoming battle had taken on new

importance because on the previous day, SIGINT had
picked up the first indications that the Iraqis had moved
what were believed to be chemical weapons from a
central stockpile site outside Baghdad to the Medina
Division. American intelligence analysts at the time
strongly believed that the weapons in question were 155-
millimeter artillery shells filled with either mustard gas or
the nerve agents VX or Sarin.— That afternoon, the
GENICOM deputy director of operations in Qatar,
Brigadier General Vincent Brooks, confirmed the story,
telling reporters, “We have seen indications through a
variety of sources . . . [that] orders have been given that at
a certain point chemical weapons may be used.”—

Despite this grave threat, the offensive against the
Medina Division in the Karbala Gap proceeded on April
1. By the end of the day, the lead elements of Blount’s
division had advanced to within fifty kilometers (about
thirty miles) of Baghdad. The Iraqis detected the move
around their flank almost immediately and reacted as best
they could, throwing elements of the Medina Division
into the breach to try to slow down the American attack.
These Iraqi countermoves were quickly noted by SIGINT
and other American intelligence sensors. Fifth Corps
commander Lieutenant General William Wallace recalled
that his intelligence assets almost immediately detected
the Iraqi reaction. “Simultaneous with those reports and
that movement, we had UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles]
flying and identifying those formations. That operational

maneuver, in my judgment, enabled the operational fires
of the coalition to really do some major damage on
portions of the Republican Guards. And from that point,
over the next twenty-four to thirty-six hours, the number
of reports we were getting on destruction of Iraqi armor
and artillery formations was dramatically larger than what
we had received earlier in the fight.”—

Blood!

On the afternoon of April 2, as thousands of U.S. troops
and hundreds of tanks belonging to General Blount’s
Third Infantry Division surged through the Karbala Gap,
a message from the commander of the Republican Guard
Medina Division to his subordinate brigades was
intercepted. It contained only three words: “Blood. Blood.
Blood.” NS A interpreted the message to mean that
“blood” was the Iraqi code word for use of chemical or
biological weapons. General Jeff Kimmons,
GENICOM’S chief of intelligence, agreed with NSA’s
analysis and so informed General Franks.—

The Top Secret SIGINT report from NS A was
immediately passed to all senior army and marine
commanders in Iraq, who placed their forces on alert.
Lieutenant General James Conway, the commander of all
Marine Corps forces in Iraq, later recalled, “Everybody
that night slept with their [gas] mask in very close
proximity, as well as sleeping in your [chemical

protection] suit.”—

Shortly after the intercept was received, three Iraqi
missiles impacted near the forward command post of the
Fifth Corps in central Iraq, setting off the chemical
detection alarms. Though it proved to be a false alarm, it
is doubtful that anyone got any sleep that night.—

The intercepted message from the commander of the
Medina Division caused more than a fair amount of
concern in Washington, where Pentagon officials were
honestly worried that the Iraqis were about to use their
purported stockpile of chemical weapons against the
Third Infantry Division. Blount’s troops had already
crossed the “Red Line,” fifty miles outside Baghdad,
where U.S. intelligence believed Saddam had authorized
his commanders to use chemical weapons against U.S.
forces. Senior White House and Pentagon officials quietly
informed selected reporters in Washington that “U.S.
forces in Iraq have recently intercepted increasing
amounts of Iraqi communications that appear to allude to
the use of weapons of mass destruction.” One unidentified
official ominously told a reporter that the intercepts were
worrisome because “there are allusions to using special
weapons. There seem to be a lot more now.”—

The Battle for Objeetive Peaeh

Unfortunately, perishable SIGINT on Iraqi military
activities was not making its way to field commanders.

While CENTCOM and the Third Army intelligence staff
in Kuwait continued getting the best intelligence available
about the strength and capabilities of the Iraqi armed
forces from NS A and other national intelligence agencies,
it did not filter down to the army division, brigade, and
battalion commanders slugging it out with the Iraqis. The
Third Infantry’s Major Erik Berdy recalled that, despite
the excellent Intel available, “it still never felt like we had
a true picture of who we were fighting, how they were
fighting and what their intent was behind it all.”—

Only after the war did the U.S. military learn that its
much-hyped “network centric warfare” electronic
communications system, which was supposed to push
intelligence down to the commanders on the battlefield in
real time, did not work. During key battles, army frontline
commanders literally did not know which Iraqi forces
they were facing, despite the fact that their superiors in
Kuwait did.—

A perfect example of this phenomenon was the role
SIGINT played in the battle for the strategically important
Al-Qa’id Bridge over the Euphrates River, thirty
kilometers (about nineteen miles) southwest of Baghdad,
on April 2-3. At four thirty p.m. on April 2, a reinforced
armored battalion of the Third Infantry Division under the
command of Lieutenant Colonel Ernest “Rock” Marcone
seized the bridge, which opened Baghdad to attack by the
hard-driving Third Infantry, coming up fast from the rear.

Marcone ’s orders were to hold the bridge until the

reinforcements from his brigade arrived. But the relief
force had to take a less direct route to the bridge, leading
Marcone’s force to stick it out overnight in its exposed
defensive positions.

Marcone, who had been told the bridge was
undefended, recalled later that the “Intel picture was
terrible ... I knew there would be Iraqis at the bridge, but
I didn’t know how many or where.” As it turned out, he
had no way of knowing that there were thousands of
heavily armed Iraqi army soldiers all around him.—

At about nine p.m., Marcone was warned by a FLASH-
precedence message that SIGINT indicated that the Iraqi
Third Special Republican Guard Commando Brigade had
just sortied from the Baghdad International Airport, to his
north, with orders to attack his position and retake the
bridge. Marcone immediately repositioned his forces as
best he could in order to face the expected Iraqi infantry
counterattack. But what SIGINT and all other intelligence
sources missed was that two armored brigades belonging
to the Republican Guard Medina and Nebuchadnezzar
Divisions, totaling between five thousand and ten
thousand men with T-72 tanks, were then converging on
Marcone’s tightly stretched defensive positions from the
south.—

Under attack by vastly superior forces during the period
beginning at two a.m., Marcone’s unit held out against the
Iraqi tanks and troops. Despite being repeatedly beaten
back and suffering catastrophically heavy casualties, the

Iraqi commander continued to press his attack, but
Marcone’s MlAl Abrams tanks, with better armor and
night vision capability, beat off the Iraqi T-72 tanks. By
five thirty a.m., the Tenth Brigade of the Medina Division
had ceased to exist as a fighting unit, and radio intercepts
revealed that the brigade commander had been killed by
an air strike on his command post.

The Bridge over the Diyala Canal

SIGINT proved its value once again on April 7, when the
lead elements of the Third Battalion of the Fourth Marine
Regiment, First Marine Division, commanded by
Lieutenant Colonel Bryan McCoy, prepared to seize
another vitally important bridge, over the Diyala Canal,
over which the rest of the marine division would cross
before driving on into Baghdad.— Just as McCoy began
his attack, an Arab linguist at GRSOC intercepted
messages indicating that Iraqi artillery was preparing to
ambush McCoy’s force by raining down heavy fire on
it.^

The reaction was immediate. According to a U.S. Army
Intelligence and Security Command account of the action,
which deleted all of the salient details of who was
involved in the action or where it was transpiring, “An
Army strategic group [GRSOC] immediately notified a
Marine battalion that it was advancing into the impact
zone of an artillery ambush on a bridge. The battalion

command [McCoy] immediately redeployed his forces to
cross the river at another location.”— Unfortunately, the
move did not take place fast enough. A barrage of Iraqi
155-millimeter artillery shells began falling on his
position. Tragically, one of the Iraqi shells scored a direct
hit on an armored assault vehicle, killing two marines and
wounding four others. But it could have been far worse
but for the warning provided by GRSOC.—

Los Endos

The capture of the bridges over the Euphrates River and
Diyala Canal meant that Baghdad was doomed.
Intercepted radio traffic revealed that the decimated Iraqi
military was in its death throes, with the few remaining
Republican Guard units deployed around Baghdad
collapsing almost without a fight. The isolated Iraqi units
that tried to stand up to the advancing American forces
were quickly destroyed by artillery and air strikes within
minutes of their radio operators going on the air. SIGINT
revealed that what was left of Saddam Hussein’s regime
refused to accept the fact that they had been defeated. As
late as April 8, the day before Baghdad fell, intercepted
Iraqi satellite phone messages showed that Hussein’s son
Qusay, the Republican Guard commander, continued to
believe that Iraq was winning the war, with Republican
Guard commanders telling him of “high American
casualties and defeats of the allied forces in various

cities.”—

During the final skirmishes inside Baghdad between the
U.S. Army and what was left of the Iraqi Army and
Republican Guard, SIGINT was used to find former
members of Hussein’s government. On April 7, a B-IB
bomber dropped four bombs on the al-Saa restaurant in
the tony Mansour district of west Baghdad, where
intelligence sources indicated Saddam Hussein and two of
his sons were meeting. Inspection of the ruins found
eighteen dead bodies, all of them unfortunate customers
of the restaurant. But Saddam and his sons were not
among the casualties. One source suggests that air strikes
on Saddam’s reported locations were prompted by NS A
intercepts of the Thuraya satellite phone used by Saddam
Hussein and his key aides. NS A had long been able to
locate people using Thuraya satellite telephones by
triangulating on the signal emanating from the phone’s
global positioning system chip. NS A had used this
technology to track the movements of al Qaeda terrorists
and other high-value targets around the world, even when
these individuals were not using their telephones. —

Conclusions

Declassified documents and interviews with former U.S.
military commanders all generally agree that SIGINT
performed well during the three weeks of Operation Iraqi
Freedom, in some cases brilliantly, as in the case of the

near-complete decapitation of the Iraqi air defense system
during the first days of the invasion.

NS A did a superb job of getting its SIGINT product to
senior U.S. military commanders as soon as it became
available. The Iraq Operational Cell within NSOC at Fort
Meade did a remarkable job of packaging and reporting
the latest SIGINT coming in from NSA’s worldwide
network of listening posts designed specifically for the
use of field commanders in Iraq through its secure
intranet system, known as NSANet. The flood of timely
and valuable information in Top Secret/COMINT e-mails
from NS A “was almost too much,” one senior
CENTCOM intelligence officer recalled. “Nobody else in
the community gave that kind of service.”— Virtually all
senior American military commanders also praised the
quantity, quality, and timeliness of NSA’s intelligence
production before and during the invasion.—

But little has been made public about the fact that Iraqi
communications security procedures prior to the invasion
were highly effective and denied NS A and the U.S.
military SIGINT units access to Iraqi military
communications traffic.—

Army and marine division commanders in the field and
their subordinate brigade and battalion commanders were
less than satisfied with SIGINT from NS A and the
military intelligence organizations under their command
during the invasion. As the desperate and heroic stand of

Colonel Marcone’s unit at Al-Qa’id Bridge demonstrated,
the perennial problem of getting really useful Intel to units
at the sharp end had yet to be solved.— Some of these
officers wondered if some sort of “digital divide”
accounted for most SIGINT intel going to army and corps
commanders and little if any going to division
commanders and their subordinates.—

Officers lower down on the chain of command,
according to a Marine Corps after-action report, “found
the enemy by running into them, much as forces have
done since the beginning of warfare.”—

Moreover, according to a U.S. Navy document, once the
invasion was under way, NSA’s strategic SIGINT
collection units in the United States archived 60 percent
of the material they collected and never processed (i.e.,
translated or analyzed) it. The military’s tactical SIGINT
units taking part in the invasion processed less than 2
percent of the Iraqi messages they intercepted. These are
hardly the sorts of numbers one can be proud of if one is
an intelligence professional. —

Just as in Afghanistan two years earlier, much of the
SIGINT collection equipment used by American military
intelligence units during the invasion was found to be
outdated and unsuited for supporting fast-moving
offensive operations.— Some of the newly developed
collection equipment did not work as advertised. For
example, the army’s highly touted Prophet tactical

SIGINT collection system proved to be fine for short-
range target location, but did not perform particularly well
when it was tasked with locating Iraqi radio emitters deep
behind enemy lines. As a result, many brigade and
division commanders reported after the war that they had
found themselves completely dependent on NSA’s
national SIGINT collection assets for locating Iraqi
forces, as in the case of the Republican Guard units
during the early stages of the invasion.—

Severe and per sistent shortages of Arabic linguists
dogged NS A and the U.S. military’s SIGINT collection
effort. For example, only half of the linguists assigned to
the SIGINT collection unit supporting the 101st Airborne
Division during the invasion spoke Arabic. The other half
spoke Korean. Since very few of the intelligence
community’s Arabic linguists could understand the Iraqi
dialect, the United States had to turn to a private
contractor to hire as quickly and as many translators as
possible who could speak the Iraqi dialect. Many of the
linguists Titan Corporation recruited on short notice (and
at considerable cost to the U.S. government) were Iraqi
political refugees living in the United States, Canada,
Europe, and Australia or first-generation Americans of
Iraqi descent. Olympic speed records were set hiring these
individuals, vetting them, and then flying them to Kuwait
in time to participate in the invasion.—

CHAPTER 1 5

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

SIGINT and Combating the Insurgencies in

Iraq and Afghanistan

/ don ’t do quagmires.

^DONALD RUMSFELD, DEPARTMENT OF

DEFENCE TRANSCRIPT

The Repeat Performanee

U.S. troops entered Baghdad on April 9, 2003, leading to
the immediate collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime.
Looting on a massive scale broke out, but U.S. forces did
not attempt to stop it. When reporters asked about the
escalating level of violence and chaos in Baghdad,
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld made his now-
famous comment: “Freedom is untidy.”-
A flood of books and studies later demonstrated that
Rumsfeld viewed the security situation in Iraq through
rose-colored glasses. Equally in a state of denial was
CENTCOM’s General Franks. In what is now widely

viewed as one of the most significant blunders in
American military history, Rumsfeld and Franks had
given little if any thought to how post-Hussein Iraq would
be governed. CENTCOM did not even begin
reconstruction planning until five months after the fall of
Baghdad. But by that time, the Iraqi insurgency was in
full swing, and the reconstruction plan was quickly
junked in favor of a counterinsurgency plan, which also
had not been worked on prior to the fall of Baghdad.-

On April 16, Franks cheerfully announced that most
U.S. combat forces in Iraq would be withdrawn within
sixty days so that they would not “wear out their
welcome.” Franks’s plan called for keeping some thirty
thousand U.S. troops there as a peacetime occupation
force. As a result, two army divisions that were supposed
to be sent to Iraq after the fall of Baghdad were never
sent, and on April 21 the Pentagon canceled plans to
deploy a third division there. By summer, there were too
few U.S. combat troops to secure Baghdad, a teeming city
of 4.8 million, or the rest of Iraq. Franks’s prescription for
disaster had been endorsed by the White House and the
Pentagon, and it was a repetition of the same mistake that
he and Rumsfeld had made a year earlier in Afghanistan.
He declared victory and left the battlefield before the job
was finished. -

As part of the drawdown of forces, the military began
rapidly and drastically reducing its intelligence presence
in Iraq, just as it had done a year earlier in Afghanistan.

Major General James “Spider” Marks, who had
commanded the U.S. military’s intelligence effort during
Operation Iraqi Freedom, left Iraq in June to return to his
former position as commandant of the U.S. Army
Intelligence Center at Fort Huachuca, in Arizona.
Virtually all of the army’s best intelligence units in Iraq
left with him, including the entire 513th Military
Intelligence Brigade, which had performed so admirably
during Operation Iraqi Freedom.-
Back in the United States, all of the intelligence staffs
and special operations units created to provide
intelligence support for the invasion of Iraq, including
those at NS A, were disbanded and their personnel
returned to their former posts. For example, the Iraq
reporting cell within NSA’s National Security Operations
Center (NSOC) was disbanded on May 2, the day after
President Bush declared “Mission Accomplished” on the
deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln.-
NSA’s SIGINT collection assets that had formerly been
committed to Iraq were shifted to intercepting the military
and diplomatic communications of Iran and Syria.
SIGINT coverage of those countries’ military and internal
security radio traffic turned up nothing to suggest that
either Iran or Syria intended anything nefarious. SIGINT
also monitored Turkish traffic because of the U.S.
concern that Turkey might intervene militarily in northern
Iraq to prevent the formation of an independent Kurdish

state, anathema to the Turkish government. -

Debilitating turf wars broke out between NS A,
GENICOM, and the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq
over “who was going to do what to whom,” which created
all sorts of unnecessary chaos on the ground there.-

Coming Prepared for the Wrong War

The first Iraqi insurgent attacks on U.S. forces began
within days of the fall of Baghdad, but they were
infrequent. However, after President Bush proclaimed
“Mission Accomplished,” the number of attacks stepped
up dramatically, to six a day by the end of the month.
American soldiers began dying, and the press began to
question whether Bush’s victory declaration might have
been a wee bit premature. White House and Pentagon
officials dismissed the attacks as the last gasp of “dead-
ender” remnants of Saddam Hussein’s regime, the work
of foreign terrorists aligned with al Qaeda, or the
activities of criminal gangs taking advantage of Hussein’s
downfalL-

The leading proponent of this sunny vision of the
situation in Iraq, which a retired army general
characterized as the “Morning in Iraq Syndrome,” was
Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, who breezily told
reporters, “In short, the coalition is making good
progress.”- In Baghdad, echoing Rumsfeld, the newly
appointed commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Lieutenant

General Ricardo Sanchez, told reporters that the Iraqi
insurgency was “strategically and operationally
insignificant.”— The chief of army intelligence in Iraq,
Colonel Steven Boltz, went so far as to tell a reporter that
the insurgent attacks were “random and it isn’t organized
and that’s a good thing.”—

But this Panglossian view of things became untenable
after suicide bombings in Baghdad and roadside attacks
on U.S. forces throughout Iraq jumped 500 percent, to
more than thirty a day. By October 2003, 203 American
soldiers had died at the hands of Iraqi insurgents, more
than all casualties suffered during the invasion of Iraq.
After the Baghdad suicide bombings of the Jordanian
embassy on August 7 and the U.N. headquarters
compound on August 19, the CIA station chief in
Baghdad warned Washington that these bombings were
symptomatic of the growing strength and deadliness of
the Sunni insurgency, but his warning was ignored.—

But the equipment that the U.S. military’s SIGINT units
had brought with them to Iraq during the 2003 invasion
proved to be next to useless in an urban
counterinsurgency environment. Major Steven Bower,
who commanded a company of the 311th Military
Intelligence Battalion in northern Iraq, recalled, “As far as
SIGINT is concerned, most of our stuff was designed to
operate on the military wave band lengths . . . but it
doesn’t pick up cell phones or a lot of the technology out

there. We still picked up some radio traffic and we still
got some stuff out of it, but it wasn’t as much as we
wanted.”— In 2004, new SIGINT equipment, including
the latest version of the army’s Prophet tactical SIGINT
collection system, called Prophet Hammer, was delivered
to every U.S. Army combat division in Iraq. The new
version of the Prophet was the army’s latest high-tech
intelligence collection toy, built specifically for cell phone
interception, which everyone in Washington thought was
a marvelous improvement. Designed for use in Europe,
the Prophet and Prophet Hammer systems did not work
well in the crowded and densely populated cities of Iraq.
They were also not designed to cope with the primitive
Iraqi signals environment because, as a brigade operations
officer with the 101st Airborne Division stationed in
northern Iraq pointed out, “at that time there wasn’t a lot
of mobile phones in use” in Iraq.—

So the U.S. Army and Marine Corps were forced to
junk much of their expensive SIGINT equipment and
spend still more millions replacing it with consumer
products — low-tech off-the-shelf radio scanners and other
equipment — not really knowing if they would work in
Iraq.—

And even if SIGINT units could intercept the phone
calls of the Iraqi insurgents, the people needed to translate
them were not available. Within months of the fall of
Baghdad in April 2003, all army division commanders in

Iraq began disbanding their SIGINT units and transferring
their personnel to fill out Tactical HUMINT Teams that
were being formed throughout the country. For example,
the Third Infantry Division’s commander, Major General
Buford Blount, whose division was responsible for
garrisoning Baghdad, stripped all of the Arabic linguists
out of his division’s SIGINT company and transferred
them to HUMINT-gathering duties — ^which of course they
were not trained or equipped for. The Arab linguists
available were trained only to listen to Arabic
communications traffic and transcribe it; they had not
been trained to speak the language with any degree of
fluency. Moreover, they had no command of the Iraqi
dialect, which put them at a severe disadvantage when
trying to talk to Iraqis.— At the same time, the company’s
SIGINT equipment, notably Prophet, was parked in the
division’s motor pool and allowed to gather dust.— Much
the same thing happened in northern Iraq, which was the
operational area of the 101st Airborne Division,
commanded by Major General David Petraeus. Many of
the Arabic cryptologic linguists assigned to the division’s
311th MI Battalion were transferred to HUMINT
collection duties, with the division intel officer G-2,
Lieutenant Colonel D.J. Reyes, concluding, “The low
technology, HUMINT-rich nature of stability operations
and support operations mitigated (and at times negated)
the effectiveness of our technical intelligence

platforms.”—

Then, in a typical U.S. Army “comedy of errors,” its
intelligence officers were shocked to discover that many
of the cryptologic linguists they had in Iraq could speak
Korean, French, Spanish, and other languages — but not
Arabic. How they ended up in Iraq in the first place
remains a question that army intelligence officials do not
seem to want to answer. As of September 2003, many of
these “misplaced persons” were still in Iraq doing jobs
that had nothing to do with intelligence, such as pulling
guard duty, manning traffic checkpoints at base gates, or
working as administrative clerks.—

The sad result was that by the end of 2003, the U.S.
military’s SIGINT collection capabilities in Iraq had
fallen to such calamitously low levels of accomplishment
that some thoroughly pissed-off army division
commanders came close to ordering the disbandment of
what was left of their SIGINT units completely. The
dearth of intelligence being produced by NS A not
surprisingly angered many of the senior military
commanders in Iraq. A former NS A liaison officer
recalled, “There were some very, very unhappy people
down in those division headquarters” who were angry
about NSA’s inability to get them the intelligence they
needed.—

As if things were not bad enough, when cell phone
service was introduced throughout Iraq in the spring and

summer of 2004, military SIGINT units discovered that
their intercept equipment brought in from the United
States was useless against the cell phones that were now
being used by the Iraqi insurgents. — It was not until the
summer of 2004 that the first U.S. Air Force cargo aircraft
began landing in Kuwait carrying emergency shipments
of hastily purchased replacement cell phone intercept
equipment. The equipment was so new that the U.S.
Army intelligence personnel accompanying it were
literally still reading the operating manuals trying to learn
how to use the stuff when the planes touched down.—

And even then, the new cell phone intercept equipment
being brought into Iraq left much to be desired because it
was available only at the brigade level, which meant that
little of the SIGINT product from this source made its
way down to the battalions slugging it out on the streets
of Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq. The equipment itself
was of marginal utility because of technical limitations on
what it could hear and its restricted range. A U.S. Army
officer who served with the First Cavalry Division in the
Shi’ite slum of Sadr City in eastern Baghdad recalled, ‘T
wasn’t impressed, though, with how good the cell phone
listening capability really was because you could get only
one side of the conversation and you had to be within a
certain range.”—

Once cell phone service began to expand, NS A and the
military SIGINT units scrambled to find security-cleared

linguists who had at least some comprehension of Iraqi
dialects, but two resources — the nascent Iraqi army and
the national police — were believed to be infiltrated by
insurgents. So the recruitment of linguists was handed
over to American private sector defense contractors —
CACI and Titan Corporation (now part of L-3
Corporation). The candidate linguists who could pass the
security clearance requirements were sent not to Iraq but
to NSA’s Gordon Regional Security Operations Center
(GRSOC), where they were immediately put to work in a
newly formed operations unit called Cobra Focus, whose
sole mission was to translate the cell phone intercepts that
were being beamed directly to GRSOC from the Iraqi
front lines via satellite.—

Monitoring Insurgent Finances and

Infiltration

All available evidence indicates that it took NS A a
significant amount of time to adapt to the rapidly
changing battlefield environment in Iraq. But in the
summer of 2003, according to Sergeant Major Kevin
Gainey, the head of the Third Infantry Division’s all-
source intelligence fusion center, “eventually we got
signals intelligence (SIGINT) working.”—

One of NSA’s early successes was determining who
was providing the Iraqi insurgents with financial and
logistical support. In 2003, SIGINT helped the Third

Armored Cavalry Regiment destroy an insurgent cell in
the town of Rawa in al-Anbar Province that was helping
foreign fighters infiltrate into Iraq from neighboring
Jordan.— Intercepts of telephone calls between insurgent
leaders in Iraq and their cohorts in Syria and elsewhere in
the Middle East in the summer and fall of 2003 revealed
that certain Iraqi insurgent groups were being financed by
former members of Saddam Hussein’s regime based in
Syria and by sympathizers elsewhere in the Arab world.
By mid-2004, SIGINT was also providing detailed
intelligence concerning the flow of money from Syria that
was being used to finance Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s
foreign fighters operating in al-Anbar Province. A former
NS A intelligence analyst said, “SIGINT showed that
Ramadi was the destination for most of the money
flowing into Iraq from Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Saudi
Arabia.” President Bush was informed that the flow of
money amounted to $1.2 million a month.—

Beginning in the summer of 2003, special NS A
intercept teams and small U.S. Army SIGINT units at
Mount Sinjar, in northern Iraq, and A1 Qaim, in western
Iraq, kept a quiet vigil on the Syrian border, trying to
monitor the flow of foreign fighters seeking to cross over
and join al-Zarqawi’s al Qaeda in Iraq.—

Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of the SIGINT
collectors, the vast majority of the foreign fighters
managed to successfully evade the U.S. Army units

deployed along the border. An army battalion commander
stationed on the border in 2003 recalled that they “weren’t
sneaking across; they were just driving across, because in
Arab countries it’s easy to get false passports and stuff.”
Once inside Iraq, most of them made their way to
Ramadi, in rebellious al-Anbar Province, which became
the key way station for foreign fighters on their way into
the heart of Iraq. In Ramadi, they were trained, equipped,
given false identification papers, and sent on their first
missions. The few foreign fighters who were captured
were dedicated — ^but not very bright. One day during the
summer of 2003, Lieutenant Colonel Henry Arnold, a
battalion commander stationed on the Syrian border, was
shown the passport of a person seeking to enter Iraq. “I
think he was from the Sudan or something like that — and
under ‘Reason for Traveling,’ it said, ‘Jihad.’ That’s how
dumb these guys were.”—

Iran was a particularly important target for NS A after
the fall of Baghdad. According to a former NS A official,
the agency was able to read much of the sensitive
communications traffic of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence
and Security (MOIS), which gave U.S. intelligence
analysts some vivid insights into Iranian policy on Iraq, as
well as details of Iranian clandestine intelligence
operations inside Iraq. But according to news reports, this
extremely sensitive NS A program was badly damaged in
the spring of 2004 by none other than America’s longtime
“expert ally” against Saddam Hussein, Ahmed Chalabi,

the leader of the Iraqi National Congress (INC). These
reports stated that Chalabi and other senior members of
the INC had secretly provided Iranian intelligence
officials with details of U.S. political and military plans in
Iraq, and NS A intercepts reportedly showed that the head
of the INC intelligence organization, Aras Habib, was on
the payroll of the Iranian intelligence service. Based on
this intelligence information, on May 20, 2004, U.S.
troops raided Chalabi ’s home and the offices of the INC
in Baghdad.—

Then in early June, news reports in the New York
Timeshdi^Qd on leaks from U.S. intelligence sources
indicated that in mid- April, Chalabi himself had told the
Baghdad station chief of MOIS that NS A had broken the
codes of the Iranian intelligence service. Perhaps not
believing Chalabi, the Iranian official reportedly radioed a
message to Tehran with the substance of Chalabi ’s
information using the code that NS A had broken.
According to the news reports, the Iranians immediately
changed their codes, and in a stroke eliminated NSA’s
best source of information about what was going on
inside Iran.—

NSA’s overall performance during the first year of the
war in Iraq has been described by a number of senior
military commanders as “disappointing.” Among the most
serious of the complaints was that NS A overemphasized
SIGINT collection directed at Iraq’s neighbors Iran and
Syria, as well as the internal machinations of the U.S.-

backed Iraqi government, at the expense of coverage of
the Iraqi insurgency movement.—

Fight for Allah! SIGINT and the Battle of

Fallujah

SIGINT’ s first important test in Iraq came in 2004 during
the Battle of Fallujah, which pitted thousands of U.S.
Marine infantrymen backed by tanks and fighter-bombers
against an equally large number of Iraqi insurgents and
foreign fighters in a bloody street-by- street battle to
decide who controlled the city, which was in the heart of
al-Anbar Province, a stronghold of the Sunni insurgency
ever since the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Between May 2003
and March 2004, an overextended brigade of the Eighty-
second Airborne Division gradually lost control of the
city to the Iraqi insurgents and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s
foreign fighters. By November 2003, the security
situation in Fallujah had become so precarious that the
last remaining units of the Eighty- second had to
withdraw, which allowed the insurgents and foreign
fighters to control the city, to the consternation of
Washington and U.S. military commanders in Baghdad.

In March 2004, the Eighty-second was replaced by the
First Marine Division, which was tasked with reasserting
control over Fallujah and the rest of al-Anbar Province.
The insurgents in Fallujah were well aware of the
marines’ preparations for a massive conventional assault

backed by tanks, artillery, and air strikes. The only
question was when.—

On March 31, less than two weeks after the marines
arrived, a mob in Fallujah killed four American security
contractors, mutilated the bodies, and hung them from a
bridge for all to see. In response, on April 4 the marines
sent in two thousand troops, backed by heavy artillery and
air strikes, but the ferocious battle that ensued ended on
April 9 when the newly elected Iraqi government;
Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III, the chief of the Coalition
Provisional Authority (CPA) in Baghdad; and
Washington became concerned about unacceptable
numbers of civilian casualties caused by the air strikes.—
After the marines withdrew from Fallujah, the insurgents
were once again in control of one of the largest cities in
Iraq. The few agents that the marines managed to recruit
and infiltrate into Fallujah were never heard from again.—

Given the failure of HUMINT, SIGINT and unmanned
reconnaissance drones became the principal providers of
intelligence about what was going on inside the besieged
city. The U.S. Marine SIGINT unit, the Third Radio
Battalion, had just arrived in-country and was still trying
to learn the terrain and its targets on the fly. By the time it
arrived, there were eight thousand marines crammed into
a massive tent city. Camp Fallujah. The Marine
SIGINTers were confined inside the defensive perimeter
of the base, enduring hundred-degree temperatures

(except when working in their air-conditioned ops center)
as well as frequent rocket and mortar attacks on the base,
until they rotated out in October 2004.—

During this period, they set about gathering intelligence
about the insurgents and quickly discovered that al-
Zarqawi’s foreign fighters, unlike their more security-
conscious Iraqi counterparts, consistently chatted away on
their ICOM walkie-talkies and cell phones. Al-Zarqawi’s
inexperienced fighters were later to pay a terrible price for
their lack of communications security.—

The marines occasionally used a small armored patrol as
bait to get the insurgents chattering on their walkie-talkies
and cell phones. A marine infantry commander recalled
that “these ‘bait and hook’ methods worked like a charm”
because the SIGINT operators could determine the exact
locations where al-Zarqawi’s fighters were concentrated
in Fallujah. “This is all bad guys,” said Captain Kirk
Mayfield. “Every sigint [electronic intercept], every
humint [informant report] tells us this is where all the
foreign fighters hang out.”—

On September 26, intercepted cell phone calls identified
the location of a meeting of senior al-Zarqawi operatives
inside the city. An unmanned Predator reconnaissance
drone surveyed the target and passed on the coordinates to
three fighter-bombers from the aircraft carrier USS John
F. Kennedy. The air strike destroyed the building and
killed everyone inside, including a Saudi named Abu

Ahmed Tabouki, one of al-Zarqawi’s most senior
commanders in Fallujah.— Two weeks later, after a
Predator identified the house inside Fallujah from which
the cell phone calls of another gathering of senior
insurgent leaders were originating, two F-16 fighter-
bombers were ordered to destroy the house with GBU-38
bombs.—

On the night of November 7, ten thousand American
troops from the First Marine Division and the army’s First
Cavalry Division launched the offensive, designated
Operation Phantom Fury (A1 Fajr), to retake Fallujah.—
The army and marine troops, supported by tanks, artillery,
and air strikes, smashed into the insurgent defenses on the
northern outskirts of Fallujah and began inexorably
pressing the insurgents back toward the center of the city.
Intercepted cell phone calls indicated that the insurgents
could not hold back the onslaught. Lieutenant Colonel
James Rainey, who commanded one of the army
mechanized battalions leading the attack, told an
interviewer, “If you’ve heard any of the enemy radio
intercepts, they clearly show that the enemy was
panicking and reeling from this attack.”—

U.S. forces thought they had won the bitter struggle,
and intercepted messages from the insurgents such as “It’s
useless. Fallujah is losf ’ seemed to confirm that.— But the
insurgents and foreign fighters inside Fallujah did not
quit, falling back before the steadily advancing U.S.

forces. The punishment that they took while desperately
trying to stem the American advance was horrific. They
fought on for eleven more days, until they were finally
overwhelmed by the numerically superior marine forces.
Hundreds of Iraqi insurgents and foreign fighters had
been killed, but the cost in American lives was steep.
More than seventy marines died in the fighting for
Fallujah, and hundreds more were wounded. The battle
may have been won for the moment, but radio intercepts
and interrogations of captured fighters revealed that two
thousand insurgents, including almost all of al-Zarqawi’s
senior commanders, had managed to escape from the city
beforeXhQ battle. It was the midlevel leadership and their
troops who had stayed behind and fought.—

After the battle, the army and marine units were ordered
to withdraw from the city and turn their positions over to
units of the ill-equipped and poorly trained Iraqi army and
Iraqi national guard. Within a matter of days, cell phone
intercepts showed that al-Zarqawi’s foreign fighters and
the Sunni insurgents had quickly moved back into
Fallujah and had retaken control of the city from the Iraqi
forces. Angry marine intelligence officers shared with
reporters intercepted telephone calls showing that the
insurgents had managed to get through the marine and
Iraqi cordon around Fallujah by blending in with the
refugees returning to the city. So in the end, the Battle of
Fallujah, like Operation Anaconda two years earlier,
ended up being nothing more than an illusory and costly

victory.—

They Te Back! The Taliban Resurgence

In Afghanistan, the U.S. military’s SIGINT effort,
although with a fraction of the size of the resources
available in Iraq, continued to improve slowly as time
went by. But far too often, an intercept that would have
enabled a U.S. unit to take out a medium- value target
“using his cell phone to coordinate and call in attacks on
coalition forces” had to be called off. With unfortunate
frequency, a unit found and engaged the enemy but was
forced to withdraw without completing its mission
because of a lack of personnel. Trying to run this
“secondary” war with manifestly insufficient U.S. forces
proved to be an exercise in futility.—

Still, U.S. Army SIGINT units in Afghanistan got better
at exploiting the Taliban’s low-level walkie-talkie traffic.
A Green Beret officer put it bluntly: The Taliban were
“using simple communications methods . . . This is not
the Cold War. We’re not using super high-tech stuff to
pick up SIGINT and things like that. Once we get on the
right frequencies and get a trusted interpreter to translate
that for us, it turns out to be a very good tool.”—

By 2004, most of the major U.S. Army firebases along
the fifteen-hundred-mile Afghan-Pakistani border had
their own small SIGINT unit, distinguished by the cluster
of antennae erupting from the rooftop of the base’s

barbed-wire-enclosed operations building. The largest
were located just outside Kandahar and at Forward
Operating Base Salerno, on the outskirts of the border
town of Khowst. And all the Green Beret base camps
spread throughout southern Afghanistan had small teams
of Green Beret and Navy SEAL SIGINT operators
providing tactical SIGINT support for Special Forces
reconnaissance teams patrolling the region along the
Afghan-Pakistani border.—

When the radio scanners at one of the firebases picked
up traffic from the Taliban’s Japanese-made ICOM
walkie-talkies (which usually had a range of five miles or
less in the rugged terrain), it usually meant that there was
a Taliban rocket or mortar team somewhere in the
vicinity, clinging to a nearby ridgeline to call in the
coordinates of its target to nearby gunners.—

At the army firebase at Shkin, in southeastern
Afghanistan, the base’s SIGINT operators became quite
adept at catching Taliban gunners preparing for such
attacks. Within minutes of the operators’ intercepting the
transmissions, artillery fire or air strikes were pummeling
the location of the Taliban mortar team. The result was, as
an army report notes, that the Taliban was “forced to shift
from accurate mortar fire to much less accurate longer
range rocket fire from less advantageous firing positions
across the border” in Pakistan. —

Inside Afghanistan itself, SIGINT was proving to be an

increasingly important defensive tool, providing warning
of impending Taliban attacks on U.S. Army patrols.
Marine Gunnery Sergeant Michael Johnson remembered a
helicopter assault during which insurgents were baiting a
trap for Afghan forces when they went out on an
operation. “We’d intercept communications of their radio
communications that they were going to ambush that
platoon. Within a minute they had contact.”—

Beginning in late 2004, U.S. commanders in
Afghanistan were gratified to see signs appearing in the
battlefield SIGINT they were receiving that some of the
Taliban guerrillas operating inside Afghanistan were
demoralized and on the run. An anonymous U.S.
intelligence officer was quoted as saying, “We actually
overheard a Taliban fighter break out into a lament,
saying ‘Where are you [Mullah] Omar, why have you
forsaken us?’

U.S. military commanders launched their own PR
offensive, releasing selected intelligence assessments
intended to convince the American public that the Taliban
in Afghanistan were all but beaten. First came the
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard
Myers, who described the security situation in
Afghanistan as “exceptionally good” during a visit to
Kabul. In a meeting with American reporters in Kabul in
April 2005, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan,
Lieutenant General David Barno, confidently predicted
that “the Taliban militia would collapse as a viable

fighting force over the next several months,” adding that
he believed that the Taliban rank and file would accept an
amnesty offer from Afghan president Hamid Karzai to lay
down their arms and join the Afghan government.—

But the spin campaign was already backfiring in late
March 2005, when Taliban guerrilla teams once again
began surging across the border from their safe havens in
northern Pakistan, but this time in numbers never seen
before. In a matter of weeks, the security situation inside
Afghanistan deteriorated rapidly. The number of attacks
on American military installations and Afghan police
posts and government offices in southern Afghanistan
rose dramatically, as did the number of civilians killed by
the Taliban.— Intelligence analysts confirmed on the basis
of SIGINT intercepts that the number of Taliban guerrilla
teams operating inside Afghanistan had also risen
dramatically in the previous two months. Moreover,
intercepts confirmed that two of the Taliban’s best field
commanders. Mullah Dadullah and Mullah Brader, had
crossed over from Pakistan and were leading large
Taliban guerrilla detachments in Kandahar and Zabul
Provinces.—

By late spring of 2005, large chunks of three important
southern Afghan provinces — Kandahar, Uruzgan, and
Zabul — ^were controlled by the Taliban, with the
exception of the major cities and a few isolated firebases,
which remained in the hands of American forces. When

Lieutenant Colonel Don Bolduc’s First Battalion, Third
Special Forces Group, arrived in Kandahar in June 2005
to take over the responsibility for garrisoning southern
Afghanistan, his men found that the U.S. Army unit that
they were replacing had done little to prevent the Taliban
from consolidating its hold on these three provinces,
preferring instead to focus its operations on clearing the
areas around the few remaining army firebases in
southern Afghanistan. Between January and July 2005,
the Taliban, thanks to this complacency, had been allowed
to establish permanent base areas in the provinces. It was
also furiously reinforcing its forces in these sanctuaries
with new guerrilla units infiltrated in from Pakistan and
new levies recruited from among sympathetic local
tribesmen.—

The situation in Zabul Province was particularly grim.
A longtime Taliban stronghold, Zabul was so hostile that
some American troops referred to it as “Talibanland.”
Others called it the “Fallujah of Afghanistan,” a reference
to the Iraqi insurgent stronghold in al-Anbar Province.
Patrols from the 173rd Airborne Brigade operating in
Zabul were repeatedly attacked by groups of as many as
100 to 150 Taliban fighters. Over and over again, army
SIGINT personnel accompanying the 173rd Airborne’s
patrols picked up heavy volumes of Taliban walkie-talkie
traffic closely monitoring their movements and
coordinating attacks on their positions. The Taliban
suffered heavy casualties, but it was clear that the

province had become a far more dangerous place than it
had been after the U.S. invasion in 2001—

But no matter how good the SIGINT was, U.S. forces
could clear but not hold the ground they took. Take, for
example, what happened after a three-day running battle
in August 2005 in the Mari Ghar region in the heart of
Zabul Province, which pitted more than two hundred
Taliban guerrillas against a twelve-man Green Beret team
from the First Battalion, Third Special Forces Group
commanded by Captain Brandon Griffin, and a sixteen-
man detachment of Afghan army troops. When the battle
was over. Captain Griffin’s team had killed sixty-five
guerrillas, losing only one man in return. But no ground
had been gained during the battle. Despite three days of
near-continuous running battles with the Taliban,
Griffin’s team had been forced to leave the Mari Ghar
region in the hands of the Taliban. It was the same old
story — the U.S. Army just had too few troops in
Afghanistan to hold anything more than the string of
firebases that it occupied throughout the country.—

Even worse, tactical SIGINT also showed that the
Taliban had morphed from a motley group of insurgents
into a heavily armed and well-led guerrilla force, which
proved to be insurgents and foreign fighters who,
according to a U.S. commander, “were resolute. They
stood and fought.”—

The Surge

Following the Battle of Fallujah in November 2004, the
security situation in Iraq continued to deteriorate rapidly
as the level of sectarian violence between the country’s
Sunni and Shi’ite militias steadily mounted and insurgent
attacks on U.S. forces shot up. In this savage and
unforgiving environment, SIGINT became increasingly
vital to U.S. military commanders as the Iraqi insurgents
dried up intelligence by closing down (i.e., killing) most
of the U.S. military’s HUMINT sources. By 2005,
SIGINT had once again supplanted HUMINT as the
principal source of intelligence for the United States. A
postmortem re-port on the U.S. Army Third Corps’s tour
of duty in Iraq had this to say about SIGINT ’s
effectiveness:

Our SIGINT collection was the most spectacular
intelligence discipline on the battlefield, as we were
able to collect on many targets cued by other
intelligence disciplines. Trusted and useful, SIGINT
provided an abundance of intelligence on insurgent
networks, named persons of interest, and enemy
operations. SIGINT is a critical area where continued
development of linguists, not only in skill but in
numbers, must occur.—

Army and marine commanders in Iraq found that
SIGINT by itself was only moderately effective at the

street level. But when combined with reasonably effective
tactical HUMINT gathering, its value soared dramatically.
Colonel Emmett Schaill, the deputy commander of the
army’s First Brigade, Twenty-fifth Infantry Division,
which operated in Mosul, in northern Iraq, from
September 2004 to June 2005, recalled that SIGINT and
unmanned drones played an important supporting role in
finding Iraqi insurgents in his sector, but were less
important than the HUMINT assets that his brigade
developed during its tour in Iraq. Leveraging the
intelligence he collected with information from national
intelligence agencies like the CIA and NS A, by the end of
his tour Schaill was able to lead his brigade to destroy 80
percent of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s al Qaeda cells in
northern Iraq, a fact confirmed by SIGINT intercepts of al
Qaeda cell phone traffic.—

Even after Schaill’ s brigade left Mosul and returned
home, SIGINT continued to produce valuable intelligence
that, working in conjunction with HUMINT and
unmanned drones, resulted in heavy insurgent casualties.
On August 12, 2005, SIGINT intercepts led U.S. Army
Special Forces to an al Qaeda in Iraq hideout outside
Mosul. When the firefight was over, three senior al Qaeda
in Iraq leaders were dead, including the commander of al
Qaeda in Iraq forces in Mosul, Abu Zubayr (aka
Mohammed Sultan Saleh), who was killed while wearing
a suicide vest packed with explosives.—

But SIGINT is an inexact science, especially against an

enemy that knows that its communications are almost
certainly being monitored. This has meant that American
intelligence analysts in Iraq have often not been able to
exploit the intercepts they get. Take, for example, a
typical “cordon and search” operation launched by a
company of U.S. Marines and a battalion of the Iraqi
army on June 29, 2005, near the town of Saqlawiyah, an
insurgent stronghold in al-Anbar Province. The goal of
the operation was to surround the town and conduct a
door-to-door search of all houses in certain
neighborhoods looking for weapons and insurgents. An
army report on the operation recounts, “During the search,
a [marine] radio battalion reported picking up insurgent
radio traffic that identified individuals by name. The
suspected insurgents were instructed to remain in their
hideout.”

The problem was that the cell phone call that the
marines had intercepted did not identify who the
insurgents were other than by their first names. Those
unfortunates who had those first names were detained —
and then released for lack of evidence.—

U.S. intelligence officials now candidly admit that the
turning point of the war in Iraq occurred in February
2006, when Sunni insurgents bombed a mosque in the city
of Samarra, which was one of the holiest shrines for Iraqi
Shi’ites. The Samarra bombing unleashed a wave of
sectarian fighting that led to unprecedented slaughter in
Iraq. All of the progress in winning the “hearts and

minds” of Iraqis was swept away, and the carnage
dominated the nightly news in the United States. This
outburst of violence came at a time when HUMINT in
Iraq was, in the words of a commentator, “fairly scarce
and usually unreliable.” The U.S. military had to depend

on SIGINT to help it combat this rising tide of violence.
M

A February 2006 report notes that an army SIGINT
platoon located south of Baghdad was “working miracles
and helping us put lots of insurgents into Abu Ghurayb
[sic] prison.”— In July, intelligence generated by the
SIGINT platoon assigned to the 506th Regimental
Combat Team led to the capture of four of the top ten
Iraqi Shi’ite insurgents known to be operating in the
unit’s area of operations. The commander of the small and
overworked team reported that his platoon “continues to
exploit and unravel insurgent networks in Eastern
Baghdad which is saving American and Iraqi lives every
day.”—

But arguably, SIGINT’ s greatest single success in Iraq
occurred on the evening of June 7, 2006, when al Qaeda
in Iraq leader al-Zarqawi and five others were killed by an
air strike conducted by two U.S. Air Force F-16 fighter-
bombers on al-Zarqawi ’s safe house five miles north of
the city of Baquba. The U.S. military, in celebrating this
success, may have gone too far — it revealed and
compromised the means used to track al-Zarqawi down, a
combination of SIGINT (cell phone interception).

HUMINT, and imagery collected by unmanned
reconnaissance drones. SIGINT tracked the movements of
al-Zarqawi’s spiritual adviser, Sheikh Abd al-Rahman, by
tapping his cell phone and tracing his movements.
HUMINT found the safe house where al-Zarqawi was
hiding. And imagery intelligence determined with
pinpoint accuracy the coordinates of the house, which was
struck by laser-guided bombs dropped by the F-16s.—

But as of the end of 2006, SIGINT had “won battles,” a
now-retired senior Marine Corps officer said, “but it did
not get us any closer to winning the war.”— It was not
until spring of 2007, four years after the U.S. invasion of
Iraq, that SIGINT finally hit its stride, producing some of
the best intelligence then available to U.S. commanders
about the identities and locations of Iraqi insurgents.
Concurrent with the beginning of the U.S. Army’s
“surge” operation in and around Baghdad, SIGINT
suddenly became a critically important tool to locate and
destroy insurgent cells operating in the Baghdad area and
in al-Anbar Province to the west. A large part of the credit
for SIGINT’ s increasing effectiveness was due to the
efforts of navy captain Steve Tucker, who since February
had held the position of chief of NSA’s Cryptologic
Services Group (CSG) Baghdad, which was situated in
the Al-Faw Palace, west of Baghdad. By the time Tucker
arrived, CSG Baghdad had ballooned into NSA’s largest
overseas liaison organization, consisting of 116 military
personnel and NS A civilians in Baghdad and ten locations

throughout Iraq. It was responsible for feeding national
and tactical-level SIGINT not only to the commander of
U.S. forces in Iraq, but also to three division headquarters
and twelve brigade staffs, as well as to the headquarters of
the secretive Combined Joint Special Operations Task
Force, which controlled all U.S. military special forces in
Iraq.—

But most of the credit for SIGINT ’s increased
effectiveness on the battlefield, according to senior U.S.
military and intelligence officials, goes to the new
commander of U.S. military forces in Iraq, General David
Petraeus, who assumed command of U.S. forces in
January 2007. According to sources familiar with U.S.
intelligence operations in Iraq, Petraeus, who was acutely
aware of the vital importance of intelligence, especially
SIGINT, in counterinsurgency warfare, went out of his
way to understand how the technology worked, and as a
result, made much more effective use of SIGINT against
the Iraqi insurgents than his predecessors had.—

In part, this was due to the introduction of far more
effective equipment like a new intercept system called
Prophet Triton, which arrived in Iraq in August 2006 and
reportedly revolutionized army SIGINT units’ ability to
identify and locate the origins of enemy cell phone
communications. This system proved to be an extremely
valuable intelligence source during the surge
counterinsurgency in Baghdad in the summer of 2007.—

Also arriving on the Iraqi battlefield in 2007 were other
newly developed SIGINT collection systems — Cellex,
DangerMouse, Searchlite, and SIGINT Terminal
Guidance, all of which have improved the U.S. Army’s
ability to intercept and locate the origins of the cell phone
calls of Iraqi insurgents and allied foreign fighters from al
Qaeda in Iraq. One of the most advanced of the new
systems is an NSA-designed piece of equipment called
simply RT-10 — ^but the high-quality intercept intelligence
it produces is made available only to selected army and
marine commanders and their intelligence staffs.—

There have also been some significant changes in tactics
that have made SIGINT a more effective tool for field
commanders in Iraq. For example, small mobile teams of
military SIGINT collectors carrying the newly arrived
SIGINT gear now routinely accompany army and marine
“door kickers” on missions throughout Iraq. The
dangerous job of these teams is to locate the nearby
hiding places of Iraqi insurgent fighters so that the patrols
they are with can find the bad guys as they talk on their
phones. Navy SIGINT teams called Joint Expeditionary
SIGINT Terminal Response Units (JESTRs) are assigned
to the army brigades in Baghdad tasked with working “the
streets to find, fix and finish insurgents.” —

Another example of a recent positive development has
been the successful use of navy SIGINT operators by the
elite Navy SEAL team in Iraq, which is permanently
based at Camp Dublin, outside Baghdad. The team has its

own dedicated Tactical Cryptologic Support team of
SIGINT operators, whose job it is to accompany SEAL
team members on their combat missions inside Baghdad,
protecting them by scanning known enemy frequencies
for insurgent threats as well as locating insurgent cell
phone emitters so that they can be attacked by the navy
special operators.— But the work is highly dangerous. On
July 6, 2007, one of these navy SIGINT intercept
operators. Petty Officer First Class Steven Daugherty,
was killed when an improvised explosion device (lED)
exploded under his Humvee during an extraction mission
inside Sadr City, the sprawling Shi’ite slum in east
Baghdad. Also killed in the blast were two other members
of SEAL Team Two.—

After General Petraeus took command of U.S. forces in
Iraq, the army and marines started to use SIGINT in
innovative ways to locate Iraqi insurgent lED teams
before they could detonate their weapons. Since May
2003, insurgents have launched over eighty-one thousand
lED attacks on U.S. and allied forces, killing or wounding
thousands of U.S. troops. The U.S. military’s efforts to
combat the use of lEDs have not been particularly
successful; as one senior CENTCOM officer put it, “Hell,
we’re getting our ass kicked.”—

From the beginning, Iraqi insurgent lED teams have
used spotters equipped with walkie-talkies or cell phones
to warn bomb teams when an American convoy is

approaching the hidden location of an lED. In order to try
to pick up these spotter transmissions, American military
convoys in Iraq and patrols in Afghanistan include a
Stryker armored vehicle or Humvee with a SIGINT
intercept operator who scans the airwaves searching for
transmissions from insurgent lED teams targeting the
convoy. Since 2005, there have been a growing number of
instances where these SIGINT operators, who are
sometimes referred to as “convoy riders,” have been able
to provide advance warning that their convoy is about to
be hit by an lED strike.—

And as time has gone by and American military
commanders have increased their understanding of how
the insurgents deploy and use their roadside bombs,
SIGINT has become increasingly effective in spotting
those emplacing the bombs. Beginning in the summer of
2007, the U.S. Army began using convoys as lures to
flush out Iraqi insurgent lED teams so that they could be
detected and located by SIGINT sensors.—

The results on the battlefield spoke volumes about how
valuable the much-improved SIGINT collection and
processing effort was to the overall success of the surge.
According to one source, SIGINT reporting increased by
200 percent between February 2007 and May 2008,
leading to the capture or killing of 600 “high-value”
insurgent commanders and the capture of 2,500 Iraqi
insurgents and foreign fighters.— Between October 2007

and April 2008, one NS A SIGINT Terminal Guidance
Unit was credited with generating intelligence that led to
the capture or killing of 300 insurgents and a 25 percent
drop in lED attacks inside Iraq.—

What God Hath Wrought

While the security situation in Iraq has improved
markedly over the past year and a half, in Afghanistan the
resurgent Taliban has made an impressive comeback.

Going into 2007, U.S. and NATO intelligence analysts
admitted that the Taliban controlled most of four key
provinces in southern Afghanistan — Helmand, Kandahar,
Uruzgan, and Zabul — and that U.S. and NATO forces in
the region were losing ground against the ten thousand to
fifteen thousand well-armed guerrillas they were facing.
The increased number and intensity of Taliban attacks in
Afghanistan dismayed many senior officials in the U.S.
intelligence community. CIA director Michael Hayden
admitted that the Taliban “has become more aggressive
than in years past” and is attempting “to stymie NATO’s
efforts in southern Afghanistan.”—

The major SIGINT problem in Afghanistan is that apart
from satellite phones, the Taliban primarily uses ICOM
walkie-talkies. NSA’s SIGINT collection resources were
long ago overshadowed by low-tech tactical radio
intercept gear, such as handheld radio scanners wielded
by uncleared Afghan interpreters working for the U.S.

Army and detecting enemy surveillance or imminent
ambushes ofU.S. and NATO forces.—

SIGINT faces daunting challenges because the resurgent
Taliban has gone on the offensive throughout the country.
The struggle in 2007 to create a secure environment in
Helmand Province pitted British forces backed by
paratroopers from the U.S. Eighty-second Airborne
Division against an enemy force that had reached a high
not seen since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.—
Daily attacks on British and Afghan army positions in
the Sangin Valley became the norm, and British patrols
into the valley routinely made contact with the Taliban
shortly after leaving their increasingly isolated firebases.
By early summer, the Taliban forces were inching closer
to British defensive positions.

In June, U.S. Air Force F-15E fighter-bombers were
called in to hit Taliban firing positions around the town of
Sangin itself “after intercepting communications chatter
revealing their [the Taliban’s] position.”— In early July, a
journalist who accompanied British troops assaulting a
Taliban stronghold north of Sangin reported that when the
troops were attacked by a large enemy force, the unit’s
translators “constantly scanned radios, listening in to
Taliban conversation, and not an hour went by without the
promise of an attack. ‘The British are walking — get
ready,’ one intercept said.”—

Still, thanks in part to SIGINT, the Taliban has suffered

severe losses. In May 2007, British commandos killed the
Taliban’s senior military commander, Mullah Dadullah, a
successful operation directly attributable to a systematic
effort by British and American SIGINT collectors to track
his movements in Helmand Province by monitoring his
satellite phone calls and those of his brother Mansour,
also a senior Taliban field commander.—

But the security situation in Helmand continued to
deteriorate as the Taliban became increasingly aggressive
in its attacks on understrength British forces, which were
largely unable to hold the ground they took from the
Taliban. In early December, British and Afghan forces
launched an offensive and recaptured the strategically
important town of Musa Qa’leh, which had been held by
the Taliban since February, but it remained to be seen if it
could be held.—

The same thing has been happening virtually
everywhere else in southern Afghanistan. The Chora
District, in Uruzgan Province, for example, is a longtime
Taliban stronghold that has consistently defied the best
efforts of the Dutch military to reduce it. Intelligence
sources, using a combination of HUMINT and SIGINT,
confirm that Chora, like many of the surrounding districts,
is for all intents and purposes a Taliban base area and
sanctuary, with SIGINT confirming that there was a
sizable contingent of foreign fighters, mostly Pakistanis,
operating in the area. But SIGINT has also confirmed that
most of the Taliban guerrillas in the area are now local

villagers who remain militarily active all year round
instead of retreating to Pakistan before the onset of
winter, as the Taliban has done in the past.—

American SIGINT resources have been used to provide
the Dutch with air strikes and surveillance, using radio
chatter to pinpoint Taliban positions identified by the
intercepts. One U.S. Air Force poststrike report notes,
“Insurgent communications chatter ceased after the
attack.”—

The military situation in neighboring Kandahar
Province, garrisoned by twenty-five hundred Canadian
troops, also deteriorated sharply in 2007. By September,
the Taliban had retaken all the districts southwest of the
city of Kandahar that British and Canadian forces had
captured at great cost a year earlier. The inability of the
numerically weaker Canadian and Afghan forces to hold
on to the territory that they are responsible for led the
commander of Canadian forces in Kandahar Province,
Brigadier General Guy Laroche, to tell reporters that
despite efforts to push out the Taliban, “everything we
have done in that regard is not a waste of time, but close
to it, I would say.”—

SIGINT has also confirmed that the Taliban has
expanded its efforts into other, previously quiet provinces,
such as Kunar, in the mountainous northeastern region of
Afghanistan. SIGINT has revealed that the Taliban is able
to respond rapidly to U.S. and NATO offensives there.

During one operation, SIGINT showed that as soon as
helicopters deposited U.S. troops on the floor of the
Korengal Valley, the Taliban knew they were there and
began tracking them. Reporter Sebastian Junger, who
accompanied the paratroopers as they moved into the
village of Aliabad, recounted, “The platoon radioman has
just received word that Taliban gunners are watching us
and are about to open fire. Signals intelligence back at the
company headquarters has been listening in on the
Taliban field radios. They say the Taliban are waiting for
us to leave the village before they shoot.”—

In early November 2007, the Taliban invaded Herat and
Farah, in western Afghanistan, both previously quiet
provinces that abut the Iranian border. In a mere ten days,
Taliban forces captured three districts in Farah without
any resistance from the local Afghan police. In
neighboring Herat, a series of high-profile attacks on
Afghan government forces and police stations signaled
that the province had become “active.”—

A sure sign that the military situation in Afghanistan has
deteriorated significantly since the beginning of 2007 is
the fact that Taliban guerrilla teams are now operating in
the provinces surrounding Kabul.— Intercepts reveal a
dramatic increase in the volume of known or suspected
Taliban radio and satellite phone traffic emanating from
Ghazni and Wardak Provinces, south of Kabul, and even
from within the capital itself since the spring of 2007.—

94

SIGINT, together with other intelligence sources, shows
that the Taliban guerrilla forces are becoming larger,
stronger, and more aggressive on the battlefield.
Intercepts have shown that despite heavy losses among
their senior leadership, the Taliban guerrilla teams inside
Afghanistan are now led by a new generation of battle-
hardened field commanders who have demonstrated
unprecedented tenacity and resilience.

The Taliban now possesses a large and robust
communications system connecting senior Taliban
commanders in northern Pakistan with their guerrilla
forces inside Afghanistan. SIGINT indicates that this
system has also been used to coordinate the movement of
increasing volumes of supplies and equipment from
Pakistan into Afghanistan. SIGINT has also provided
ample evidence that the Taliban has largely negated the
U.S. Army’s advantage in superior mobility by carefully
monitoring the activities taking place at U.S. and NATO
bases in southern Afghanistan. At one isolated American
firebase in Zabul Province, intercept operators noted that
as soon as a patrol left the base’s front gate, there was a
spike in Taliban walkie-talkie traffic. “The Americans
have just left. They’re coming this way. We will need
more reinforcements if they approach any closer,” one
intercepted Taliban radio transmission said.— An
American soldier serving in Zabul Province wrote a letter
home in July 2007 that gives a sense of the problem: “We

cannot go anywhere without the [Taliban] being aware of
our movements . . . Their early warning is through the
villagers who either by cell phone, satellite phone or
ICOM radio inform [Taliban] forces of our movements
and the make-up of our convoy.”—

More than 5,300 people died in Afghanistan in 2007 as
a result of increased Taliban attacks, making it the
deadliest year since the U.S. invasion of the country in the
fall of 2001.— The casualty toll for American troops in
Afghanistan in 2007 hit 101 dead, a new record
surpassing the 93 American troops killed there in 2005.
Reports indicate that 87 American troops were killed
there in 2006.—

Today, the outlook in Afghanistan is grim. In February
2008, Mike McConnell, now the director of national
intelligence, told Congress that contrary to the rosier
prognosis coming out of the Pentagon, the Taliban now
controlled 1 0 percent of the country, including most of the
Pashtun heartland in southern Afghanistan. Lieutenant
General David Bamo, who commanded U.S. forces in
Afghanistan for twenty-eight months from 2003 to 2005,
admitted that the military situation there had deteriorated
markedly in recent times, writing in an internal U.S.
Army journal that recent developments “in all likelihood
do not augur well for the future of our policy goals in
Afghanistan.”—

CHAPTER 1 6

Crisis in the Ranks

The Current Status of the National Security

Agency

Secret services are the only real measure of a
nation ’s political health, the only real expression oj
its subconscious.

^JOHN LE CARRE, TINKAR, TAILOR, SOLDIER,

SPY

The Arrival of Keith Alexander

In April 2005, Lieutenant General Mike Hayden stepped
down as director of NS A to become the first deputy
director of national intelligence. Then, a year later, he
became the director of the CIA. Meanwhile, on August 1,
2005, a new director of NSA arrived at Fort Meade. He
was fifty-three-year-old Lieutenant General Keith
Alexander, who before coming to NSA had been the U.S.
Army’s deputy chief of staff for intelligence since 2003.-
A career army intelligence officer, Alexander was bom

and raised in Syracuse, New York. He graduated from
West Point in 1974, then spent the next twenty years
holding a series of increasingly important army
intelligence posts. Alexander served as the director of
intelligence of CENTCOM at MacDill Air Force Base, in
Florida, under General Tommy Franks from 1998 to
2001, directing all intelligence operations relating to the
invasion of Afghanistan. He was then promoted to be
commander of the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security
Command at Fort Belvoir, in Virginia, a position he held
from 2001 to 2003.-

Explosion

On December 16, 2005, the lead article in the New York
Times, by James Risen and Eric Fichtblau, was titled
“Bush Fets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts.” The
article instantly became a national sensation, revealing the
broad outlines of a secret eavesdropping program run by
NS A to find al Qaeda operatives, but not many of the
specifics. The most explosive aspect of the article was the
revelation that for four years NS A had monitored the
communications of Americans without obtaining warrants
from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC),
which are ordinarily required in order to conduct any
form of surveillance inside the United States. -
The article produced a firestorm of controversy, further
poisoning the already rancorous political environment in

Washington, in which the White House and the
Republicans, who controlled Congress, were pitted
against the Democratic minority. The revelations were
particularly embarrassing to CIA director George Tenet
and former NS A director Hayden, who had, in a joint
appearance five years earlier before the House
intelligence committee, stated in unequivocal terms that
NS A did not engage in spying on U.S. citizens. Tenet had
told the committee, “We do not collect against US
persons unless they are agents of a foreign power ... We
do not target their conversations for collection in the
United States unless a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act (FISA) warrant has been obtained . . . And we do not
target their conversations for collection overseas unless
Executive Order 12333 has been followed and the
Attorney General has personally approved collection.”
Hayden had described earlier news reports that NS A was
engaged in monitoring the communications of U.S.
citizens as an “urban myth,” and had assured the
committee that NS A would assiduously abide by the legal
strictures on such activities as contained in 1978’s FISA.
A little more than a year later, all of these promises would
be secretly broken in the aftermath of 9/1 1-

What We Know

Since that December 2005 New York T/me^article, further
information about the nature and extent of the NS A

domestic surveillance program has been slow in coming.

It would appear that there are between ten and twelve
programs being run by NS A dealing directly in some
fashion with the agency’s warrantless SIGINT efforts,
including at least a half-dozen strictly compartmentalized
SIGINT collection, processing, analytic, and reporting
projects handling different operational aspects of the
problem. For example, there is a special unit located
within NSA’s Data Acquisition Directorate that is
responsible for collecting the vast number of overseas e-
mails, personal messaging communications, wire
transfers, airplane reservations, and credit card
transactions that transit through the United States every
day because they are carried over lines owned by
American telecommunications companies or Internet
service providers. In addition to the five or six
compartmented “core” collection and analytic programs,
there are another five or six “support” or “rear-end”
programs performing research, development, engineering,
computer support, and security functions in support of the
“front-end” operational units. All of these program units
are kept strictly segregated from the NS A SIGINT
Directorate’s other foreign intelligence collection efforts. -

The only one of these NS A programs that the Bush
administration has publicly acknowledged is the
warrantless eavesdropping program, which the White
House labeled in 2005 as the Terrorist Surveillance
Program (TSP). All other aspects of NSA’s SIGINT

collection work that touch on the domestic front have
remained unacknowledged. For example, the White
House has refused to acknowledge NSA’s parallel data-
mining program, code-named Stellar Wind, which sifts
through vast amounts of electronic data secretly provided
by America’s largest telecommunications companies and
Internet service providers, looking for signs of terrorist
activity at home and abroad.

Intense and unwavering secrecy has been the hallmark
of these programs since their inception, and even the
number of people at NS A headquarters who know the
details of the operations has deliberately been kept to a
minimum for security reasons. Each of these programs
operates from inside its own special “red seal” work
center at Fort Meade, meaning that those NS A employees
cleared for these specific programs must pass one at a
time through a booth containing a retinal or iris scanner
and other biometric sensors before they can get inside
their operations center.

Interviews with over a dozen former and current U.S.
government officials reveal that the number of people
within the U.S. government and intelligence community
who knew anything about the NS A programs prior to
their disclosure by the New York Timeswdi^ very small.
The men in the White House who managed the NS A
effort. Vice President Dick Cheney and his chief legal
counsel, David Addington, strictly regulated who within
the U.S. government could have access to information

about the eavesdropping programs, restricting clearance to
just a select few senior government officials in the White
House and the Justice Department, all of whom were
deemed to be “loyal” by Cheney’s office, and as such,
unlikely to question the programs’ legality
A book by a former senior Justice Department official.
Jack Goldsmith, and interviews conducted for this book
reveal that a large number of senior officials inside the
U.S. government with a “need to know” were deliberately
excluded by Cheney’s office from having access to
information concerning the NS A eavesdropping
programs. With the exception of four senior officials, all
Justice Department employees were barred from access to
details concerning the programs by order of Cheney’s
office, including Deputy Attorney General Larry
Thompson and the Justice Department’s Civil and
Criminal Divisions.- Even the attorney general of the
United States himself experienced great difficulty getting
essential information about the programs from Cheney’s
office. Attorney General John Ashcroft, who was one of
the few U.S. government officials cleared for access to the
programs by the White House, complained in 2004 that
“he was barred from obtaining the advice he needed on
the program by the strict compartmentalization rules of
the WH [White House].”- Ashcroft was not alone.
Goldsmith noted, “I too faced resistance from the White
House in getting the clearance for the lawyers I needed to

analyze the program.”-

Within the U.S. intelligence community, virtually no
one was granted access to information about the
eavesdropping programs, such as the legal briefs written
by White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and Justice
Department lawyer John Yoo that justified the program.
At the top of the list of people who were ^o/permitted to
see the Gonzales and Yoo legal briefs were the lawyers in
NSA’s Office of General Counsel responsible for
ensuring that the eavesdropping programs conformed with
the law. Goldsmith said, “Before I arrived in O.L.C. [the
Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel], not even
NS A lawyers were allowed to see the Justice
Department’s legal analysis of what NSA was doing.”
Other senior NSA officials responsible for ensuring the
probity of NSA’s domestic eavesdropping programs were
also denied access to the Gonzales and Yoo legal briefs.
In late 2003, two years after the programs began, NSA’s
inspector general asked for permission to see the Justice
Department legal brief authorizing the program, but his
request was denied by David Addington.—

But of greater importance is that former NSA director
Hayden, in trying to defend the legality of the program,
has publicly stated that three of NSA’s top lawyers
assured him in late 2001 that the agency’s domestic
eavesdropping programs were legal. One has to wonder
how NSA’s Office of General Counsel could possibly
have arrived at this conclusion if the agency’s lawyers

could not see the documents that served as the legal
underpinnings for the programs. Past and present NS A
officials interviewed for this book, while refusing to
comment specifically on the legality of the agency’s
domestic eavesdropping programs, confirmed that key
NS A operational personnel were never permitted to see
these documents, a fact that gave a number of senior NS A
officials more than a little cause for concern.—

One of the most controversial aspects of the NS A
program has been the nagging question of how many
people have had their telephone calls and e-mails
monitored by NS A since the program commenced after
9/11. The New York ’December 2005 article

indicated that the answer was “hundreds, perhaps
thousands, of people inside the United States.” According
to anonymous government officials quoted by the
reporters, NS A “eavesdrops without warrants on up to
500 people in the United States at any given time . . .
Overseas, about 5,000 to 7,000 people suspected of
terrorist ties are monitored at one time.”— A Washington
Po^/^article, citing “two knowledgeable sources,” claimed
that the number of Americans monitored by NS A was as
high as five thousand people between 2001 and early
2006.— But U.S. government officials, including Hayden,
denied that the number of people being monitored by the
agency was anywhere near this large. In an August 2007
interview with the El Paso Times, the director of national

intelligence, Admiral Mike McConnell, said that the
number of NS A eavesdropping targets inside the United
States was “100 or less. And then the foreign side, it’s in
the thousands.”—

Regardless of the number of American citizens actually
monitored since the NS A warrantless eavesdropping
program began seven years ago, a number of former NS A
officials have expressed concern that the number of
targets inside the United States reportedly being
monitored appears to be overly large when compared with
the actual threat, given that there have been no terrorist
attacks in the United States since 9/11, nor any high-
profile arrests of al Qaeda “sleeper cells” or operatives.
These officials then wonder how so many individuals in
the United States could conceivably have been under
active surveillance by NS A over the past seven years with
virtually no arrests or convictions to show for all the
effort.—

There is as yet no evidence that the White House used
NS A to target the communications of Americans for
political purposes. But there are some worrisome signs
that the agency’s SIGINT reporting may have been
misused by some administration officials. In April 2005, a
political controversy erupted in Washington when it was
learned that the Bush administration’s nominee to be the
ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, had
requested from NS A transcripts of intercepted
conversations involving or pertaining to other U.S.

government officials while he was a senior official at the
State Department. NS A admitted that it had made copies
of these transcripts, including the names of the American
officials involved, available to Bolton.— A few weeks
later, the magazine Aew^weeArevealed that since January
2004 NS A had received between three thousand and
thirty-five hundred requests for transcripts of intercepted
communications involving American citizens from
various U.S. government departments, four hundred of
which came from the State Department. NS A complied
with all of these requests. The article indicated that the
names of as many as ten thousand Americans were
contained in the intercept transcripts turned over to the
various U.S. government agencies that had requested
them.— It was later learned that Bolton, who became the
interim ambassador to the United Nations, had personally
originated ten requests since January 2004 for unredacted
NS A intercept transcripts that mentioned the names of
U.S. government officials or American citizens.—

Which raises the obvious question of whether the NS A
warrantless eavesdropping programs have actually
accomplished anything for the billions of dollars spent on
them. In justifying the need for the warrantless
eavesdropping programs. President Bush, former NS A
director Hayden, and other senior administration officials
repeatedly stressed that the program had delivered
critically important intelligence, but naturally they have

provided no details. All Hayden admitted is that the
program “has been successful in detecting and preventing
attacks inside the United States.”— By far the strongest
defense of the program has come from former vice
president Cheney, who in December 2005, while on a
visit to Pakistan, told a reporter from CNN that it “has
saved thousands of lives.”—

But to date, the only arrest of an al Qaeda terrorist in the
United States that the NS A warrantless eavesdropping
program supposedly was involved in was that of lyman
Paris, a thirty-eight-year-old truck driver in Columbus,
Ohio, who was caught in March 2003 planning to destroy
the Brooklyn Bridge, in New York City. A native of
Pakistan but a naturalized American citizen, Paris pleaded
guilty to helping al Qaeda plan terrorist attacks in the
United States and in October 2003 was sentenced to
twenty years in prison.—

Pormer U.S. intelligence officials have confirmed that
Paris was identified as an al Qaeda “sleeper” based
largely on data provided by NS A. The trail that led to him
began just before dawn on January 9, 2003, when
Pakistani police stormed a house in the upscale Karachi
suburb of Gulshan-i-Maymar that belonged to a senior
member of Jamaat-i-Islami, a Pakistani radical Islamic
organization. The occupants of the apartment threw two
hand grenades at the police. One went off harmlessly . The
other failed to detonate because the man who threw it

forgot to pull the pin. After a brief struggle, the police
arrested and hustled away for interrogation two men — an
Egyptian and a Yemeni. Under interrogation, both men
admitted to being former al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan
who had fled to Pakistan after the U.S. invasion of that
country. CIA and FBI officials who participated in the
interrogations of both men in Karachi identified the
Egyptian, who told the police his name was Abu Umar, as
a senior deputy to Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin
Laden’s Egyptian-born deputy. The assault on the
apartment had resulted from NSA’s intercepting satellite
phone calls coming into the apartment from al Qaeda
operatives throughout the Middle East. Seized in the raid
were more than thirty thousand dollars in cash and Abu
Umar’s satellite phone, which, when its data was
downloaded, proved to be a treasure trove of intelligence
for the CIA.—

From the calling data contained in the phone’s memory,
NS A was able to determine that a senior al Qaeda leader
was operating somewhere in the vicinity of the Pakistani
city of Rawalpindi. In February 2003, intercepted e-mails
and satellite telephone communications led U.S. and
Pakistani security officials to the hideout in Rawalpindi of
the al Qaeda mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed. At four a.m. on March 1, heavily
armed Pakistani security forces burst into Mohammed’s
hideout and arrested him and another key al Qaeda
operative, Mohammed Ahmed al-Hawsawi. A former

NS A intelligence analyst confirmed that Paris was
identified as an al Qaeda sleeper in the United States
based on data downloaded from Khalid Sheikh
Mohammed’s cell phone and laptop computer seized in
the raid.—

Despite the identification and arrest of Paris, a number
of former U.S. intelligence officials disagree with
statements emanating from the White House about the
“vital importance” of the NS A warrantless eavesdropping
program, believing that these statements grossly overstate
its actual accomplishments.

Details are admittedly lacking, but a few former

intelligence analysts have hinted that the program has

been useful in helping stop a number of terrorist attacks

overseas, but there appears to be little evidence of major

successes against al Qaeda or other terrorist organizations

inside the United States since 9/11. When asked for his

impression of the value of the eavesdropping program, a

recently retired senior CIA official stated, “We spent a ton

on the [NS A] program, but got back very little in the way

of solid returns ... I don’t think it was worth the
”24

money. —

Then there is the equally contentious issue of what role
America’s largest telecommunications companies played
in assisting NS A. The first hint that these companies had
assisted the agency’s warrantless eavesdropping effort
appeared in a follow-up December 2005 r/me^article by
Eric Lichtblau and James Risen, which reported that “the

NS A has gained the cooperation of American
telecommunications companies to obtain backdoor access
to streams of domestic and international
communications.” According to the article, this vast
pipeline of raw telephone and e-mail data was being
systematically combed by NS A analysts using the
agency’s data-mining software “in search of patterns that
might point to terrorism suspects.”—

In May 2006, the next bombshell hit when USA
ToJayrevealed that a number of the largest American
telecommunications companies, including AT&T, MCI,
and Sprint, had closely collaborated with NS A in the
warrantless eavesdropping program. Only Qwest, the
nation’s fourth-largest telecommunications company, had
refused to participate in the program, despite repeated
requests by NS A. At about the same time, an AT&T
technician revealed that the telecommunications giant he
worked for had allowed NS A to place eavesdropping
equipment inside its network switching centers in San
Francisco and Atlanta, through which much of America
and the world’s e-mail traffic passes. This may, in fact, be
the tip of the iceberg, since a number of key American
telecommunications companies other than AT&T have
refused to answer questions from reporters about whether
they too cooperated with NSA’s domestic eavesdropping
effort.—

Of what little is definitively known about what the
telecommunications companies did on behalf of NS A is

that they refused to cooperate without a letter from the
U.S. Justice Department assuring them that their efforts
on behalf of NS A were proper and legal. This exact
situation had played out fifty- six years earlier when, in
August 1945, NSA’s predecessor, the Army Security
Agency, asked America’s “Big Three” cable companies to
give it access to all international telegraph traffic coming
in and out of the United States as part of a Top Secret
program called Shamrock. The U.S. Army knew from the
outset that the program was highly illegal and dangerous,
but senior military officials concluded that the risks were
worth it to get at the raw traffic.— Under extraordinary
pressure from Washington, the cable companies
reluctantly agreed to cooperate, but only if the U.S.
government would immunize them against any civil or
criminal actions if the operation was uncovered. But back
then, the U.S. government could find no way to give the
companies the legal protection they were demanding
without new legislation, which would have required
telling Congress what they were up.—

But unlike this Cold War attempt at domestic
eavesdropping, the telecommunications companies this
time got what they wanted. Assistant Attorney General
Kenneth Wainstein, testifying before Congress on
October 31, 2007, admitted, “There were letters that went
out to these companies that said very forcefully this is
being directed, this is directed by the president, and this
has been deemed lawful at the very highest levels of the

government.” None of the letters sent to the companies
have been released, but a number of Washington-based
attorneys familiar with the matter confirmed that the
letters exist and serve as the companies’ chief legal
defense against the charge that they violated state and
federal laws.— A Washington-based official representing
one of the companies confirmed that his client has in its
files almost seven years of accumulated correspondence
from the Justice Department assuring the company that its
cooperation with NS A was legal and proper, with a new
letter arriving from Washington every forty-five days
reiterating that the company’s work on behalf of the U.S.
government continued to be required.—

Naturally, the telecommunications companies will
neither confirm nor deny their participation in the NS A
program, but AT&T and the other companies have
repeatedly stated that as a matter of policy they cooperate
with all lawful requests made of them by U.S. law
enforcement agencies. The companies have furiously
fought in the courts attempts by state regulators and
private citizens to determine if they improperly provided
NS A with calling information for their customers. They
have also lobbied intensively, with full White House
support, to have Congress immunize them from any civil
or criminal liabilities that may have extended from their
participation in the NS A domestic eavesdropping
program. —

But questions have mounted among NS A officials
because of the strenuous efforts by the Bush
administration to persuade Congress to grant retroactive
immunity from both civil suits and criminal prosecution
to all of the American telecommunications companies that
have participated in NSA’s domestic eavesdropping
programs. The problem was that until October 2007 the
White House would not tell Congress what the companies
had done as part of the programs, so Congress was placed
in the surreal position of being asked to give complete
immunity to the telecommunications companies without
knowing what it was that they had done.—

Then, to the shock of many, in October 2007 the House
and Senate intelligence committees, now controlled by the
Democrats, bowed to White House pressure and intense
lobbying by the telecommunications companies and, after
being given limited access to classified documents
concerning the role played by the companies in the NS A
domestic eavesdropping effort, approved a proposal to
give the companies the full immunity they wanted. The
immunity deal was approved by Congress in 2008.—
Former NS A officials believe that just as with the ASA
Shamrock program of the Cold War, the
telecommunications companies knew that what they were
doing was illegal from the very beginning. As one NS A
retiree put it, “why then would they need immunity if
what they did was legal?” After reading a spate of
newspaper reports on the subject, a disgusted NS A

official said, “They keep trying to give the telecoms a
‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card. That tells me there is
something illegal about what the companies have been
doing. [The immunity deal] stinks to high heaven.”—

But Is It Legal?

Much of the debate since the first New York r/me^article
came out in December 2005 has focused on the legality of
the NS A warrantless domestic eavesdropping program. Its
legal ramifications are immense and of enormous
consequence for every American.

At the center of this debate are a number of still-
classified legal briefs written by then- White House legal
counsel (and subsequently Attorney General) Alberto
Gonzales and Justice Department lawyer John Yoo, which
served as the legal rationale and underpinning of the NS A
program. Gonzales, who authored one of these Top Secret
documents, eventually disclosed that the central argument
of his brief, and of Yoo’ s brief, is that in time of war there
are, in his opinion, no restrictions on what the president of
the United States can or cannot do in the name of national
security. Gonzales’s and Yoo’s legal briefs essentially
argue that the president’s expansive wartime powers gave
him the authority to bypass the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court and order NS A to conduct warrantless
surveillance operations without reference to the FISC. In
essence, the briefs argue that the president’s wartime

powers trump the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution,
which is supposed to protect Americans against
unwarranted searches and seizures. This interpretation of
the president’s war powers also served as the legal
justification for the CIA’s highly sensitive counterterrorist
intelligence-gathering effort referred to within the U.S.
intelligence community solely by the initials “GST.”—

The problem is that these legal briefs fly in the face of
over two hundred years of this nation’s constitutional case
law, which has found that even in time of war there are
indeed constitutional limits on the powers of the
presidency. The American Bar Association and a host of
prominent American constitutional scholars from all
political denominations have argued that there is no court
decision or legal precedent that supports President Bush’s
contention that his constitutional authority allows him to
override or disregard an act of Congress or the
Constitution. This argument was laid out in a lengthy
February 2, 2006, letter to Congress written by fourteen
distinguished constitutional law scholars, including
Harold Hongju Koh, the dean of Yale Law School, and
the former heads of the Stanford and University of
Chicago law schools, who wrote.

The argument that conduct undertaken by the
Commander-in-Chief that has some relevance to
“engaging the enemy” is immune from congressional
regulation finds no support in, and is directly

contradicted by, both case law and historical
precedent. Every time the Supreme Court has
confronted a statute limiting the Commander-in-
Chiefs authority, it has upheld the statute. No
precedent holds that the President, when acting as
Commander-in-Chief, is free to disregard an Act of
Congress, much less a criminal statute enacted by
Congress, that was designed specifically to restrain
the President as such.—

Interviews reveal that these same concerns are shared by
a number of mostly retired NS A officials, some of whom
lived through the Church Committee hearings of 1975 on
the agency’s illegal domestic operations. At the heart of
their unease is the fact that many of them just plain don’t
like spying on Americans, no matter what the stated legal
rationale, the predominant feeling being that NS A should
remain a strictly foreign intelligence agency and not get
caught up in domestic surveillance work. An NS A staffer
had this to say in an anonymous e-mail posting sent to a
magazine: “It’s drilled into you from minute one that you
should not ever, ever, ever, under any fucking
circumstances turn this massive apparatus on an
American citizen. You do a lot of weird shit. But at least
you don’t fuck with your own people.”— A retired NSA
official, worried about the future ramifications for the
agency resulting from the political fiiror over the its
domestic operations, said, “This is just plain cops and

robbers stuff . . . This whole thing is a matter for the FBI
counter-terrorist types. We shouldn’t have anything to do
with this at all.”—

Most of the NS A officials interviewed for this book do
honestly believe that the agency’s warrantless
eavesdropping program and other still-undisclosed NS A
intelligence-gathering efforts are a necessary and
important component in the fight against al Qaeda.
However, a number of them have become increasingly
uneasy since that first New York r/me^article about the
legality of these programs. One recently retired NS A
official wondered why the NS A eavesdropping program
could not have been conducted within the strictures of
FISA, given the fact that the agency has stated that FISA
has in no way hampered its other SIGINT collection
operations. For instance, in a March 2005 report to
President Bush on the U.S. intelligence community’s
performance against the Iraqi WMD programs, NS A
officials testified that FISA “has not posed a serious
obstacle to effective intelligence gathering.” It should be
noted that at the time that NS A made this statement to the
review panel, the agency’s secret domestic eavesdropping
program, which deliberately bypassed the FISC, had been
ongoing for almost three and a half years without the
court’s knowledge or consent.—

Another former senior NS A official was shocked when
he read in the newspapers that in May 2006 the Justice
Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility

(OPR) had been forced to shut down an internal
investigation into the department’s involvement in the
NS A eavesdropping program because Vice President
Cheney’s office had refused to grant the security
clearances the investigators needed in order to gain access
to documents relating to the program. Only after Michael
Mukasey replaced Alberto Gonzales as attorney general in
November 2007 did the White House finally relent and
grant the security clearances to the OPR investigators.—

A small number of NS A officials have been disturbed
by the Bush administration loudly and repeatedly arguing
that the NS A eavesdropping programs are perfectly legal
while at the same time widely using the “state secrets”
privilege to quash all lawsuits filed by state regulators and
activist groups questioning their legality, contending that
any discussion whatsoever in a federal court house, even
if held in secret, would constitute a threat to the program.
Former NS A officials recall that this was the exact same
argument used by Nixon administration lawyers during
the early 1970s in their unsuccessful effort to prevent the
publication of the Pentagon Papers. As it turned out, the
publication of the Pentagon Papers caused no meaningful
or lasting damage to U.S. national security, but gravely
embarrassed the Johnson and Nixon administrations by
revealing the tortured path that had led the United States
to become involved in the Vietnam quagmire and the
mistakes made by the White House in managing the war.
This has led many NS A officials to wonder about the

legality of these programs. One former senior NS A
official whimsically said, “They [the Bush White House]
are behaving like they have something to hide rather than
something to protect, which scares the shit out of me.”—
But most disturbing to a number of former and current
NS A officials have been the press reports and testimony
before Congress by former Justice Department officials
revealing that there were significant disagreements
between the White House and the Justice Department
over the legality of parts of the NS A domestic
eavesdropping programs. In May 2007, news reports
offered details of an encounter that took place in March
2004 between Justice Department and White House
officials at the bedside of Attorney General John Ashcroft
as he lay gravely ill in a room at George Washington
University Hospital. What sparked the encounter was
Ashcroft deputy James Comey’s refusal to reauthorize the
NS A domestic eavesdropping program unless substantive
changes were made to the underlying authorization order.
The White House refused to make the changes and tried
to do an end run around Comey by sending White House
chief of staff Andrew Card and then- White House legal
counsel Gonzales to visit Ashcroft at his bedside and get
him to reauthorize the program. Alerted that Card and
Gonzales were on their way to see Ashcroft, Comey raced
up to the hospital, beating the two White House officials
by only a matter of minutes. To his credit, Ashcroft
refused to reauthorize the program unless the changes that

Comey wanted were made. And to add insult to injury,
Ashcroft reminded Card and Gonzales that in his absence,
Comey was the attorney general of the United States,
leaving unsaid the fact that their attempt at an end run was
inappropriate.—

After the Comey battle with the White House came out
in the press, one currently serving midlevel NS A
manager, who was not involved in the warrantless
eavesdropping program or related NS A domestic
surveillance programs, said, “I wonder what else they’re
not telling us. It sure as hell doesn’t look or smell very
good.”—

A few months later came further revelations that those
few Justice Department officials who had been cleared to
examine the NS A domestic eavesdropping programs had
found the legal justifications for conducting the programs
to be at best flawed. The former head of the Justice
Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, Jack Goldsmith,
who reviewed the NS A program in 2003-2004, testified
before Congress in October 2007 that he “could not find a
legal basis for some aspects of the program,” adding, “It
was the biggest legal mess I have ever encountered.”—

Goldsmith’s assessment of the legality of the NSA
program was confirmed by a number of recent court
rulings, including a still-secret March 2007 FISC ruling
that found that elements of NSA’s domestic
eavesdropping effort were illegal. The FISC judge’s

ruling says, in effect, that certain aspects of NSA’s
monitoring of foreign communications passing through
U.S. -based telephone switching centers and Internet
service providers are patently illegal. According to
Newsweek, the judge, whose identity remains a secret,
concluded “that the [Bush] administration had
overstepped its legal authorities in conducting warrantless
eavesdropping.” As a result, the judge refused to
reauthorize the program until such time as it was brought
into conformance with FISA.—

The Fear of the Unknown

In the end, the fear among a number of retired NS A
officers is that the agency’s domestic eavesdropping
program, in addition to generating much unwanted
negative publicity for the agency, almost certainly
diverted much-needed manpower and fiscal resources
from NSA’s foreign- intelligence-gathering mission to
what the agency officers generally believe to have been a
poorly considered and legally questionable domestic
monitoring operation that apparently has produced little in
the way of tangible results, despite claims to the contrary
from the White House.—

Sadly, it seems likely that it will take years before the
classified storage vaults are opened and a better
understanding of the NS A warrantless eavesdropping
program becomes available. Until then, it will be

impossible for the American public to fully understand,
much less appreciate, the implications of the NS A
program and the culture of fear that gave birth to it and
continues to sustain it today. Two senior Justice
Department officials interviewed for this book, while
refusing to provide any specifics, strongly suggested that
future public disclosures about the nature and extent of
the NS A domestic eavesdropping program will almost
certainly raise troubling questions about not only the
viability of the program, but also its legality and its
overall effectiveness.

But perhaps most troubling of all is the grim acceptance
among virtually all of the former and currently serving
NS A officials interviewed for this book that, sooner or
later, the details of the agency’s domestic eavesdropping
programs will be disclosed publicly. The concern felt by
most of the officials is that the agency, for better or for
worse, will bear the brunt of what an NS A retiree called
“the frightful harvesf ’ once it becomes known what NS A
has done since 9/11. A former NS A official offered this
prediction about what the agency is inevitably going to
have to face: “There almost certainly will be a host of
lawsuits as well as demands for changing existing laws so
as to tighten restrictions on what NS A can and cannot do.
The pundits will have a field day, and we are going to
take it in the pants.”—

The Uncertain Future

General Keith Alexander inherited an agency in 2005 that
was dramatically larger and better funded than that
inherited by his predecessor, Mike Hayden. Before the
tragic 9/11 terrorist attacks, the thirty-two-thousand-
person NS A, with an annual budget of less than four
billion dollars, was struggling to transform and modernize
itself with only mixed success to show for its efforts. —
Today, the agency’s manpower has topped forty thousand
people, and NS A officials indicate that the agency intends
to continue with its 2004 project of hiring twelve
thousand additional civilian personnel by 2011. NSA’s
annual budget is now estimated to be in excess of nine
billion dollars, having more than doubled in the first five
years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and press reports
indicate that it continues to increase rapidly.— If one
accepts the publicly reported figures for the size of the
U.S. intelligence budget (forty-eight billion dollars as of
May 2007), NSA’s budget accounts for almost 20 percent
of all U.S. intelligence spending, not including the U.S.
military’s spending on tactical SIGINT programs.—
Moreover, the SIGINT empire that NS A controls,
known as the U.S. Cryptologic System (USCS), which
includes SIGINT personnel assigned to the CIA, the
National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the three military
services, and the U.S. Coast Guard, has grown to more
than sixty thousand military and civilian personnel since
9/11, making it by far the single largest component of the

U.S. intelligence community. NS A is in the process of
opening new operations centers in San Antonio, Texas;
Denver, Colorado; and Salt Lake City, Utah, which when
completed will employ several thousand civilian and
military staff.— In February 2006, Congress passed an
emergency supplemental appropriations bill, which
included thirty-five million dollars to immediately expand
NSA’s huge listening post at Menwith Hill, in northern
England, as well as another seven hundred million dollars
to construct new operational facilities at the agency’s
existing intelligence collection stations at Kunia, in
Hawaii, and Fort Gordon, in Georgia.—

But NSA’s power within the U.S. intelligence
community is not derived from its massive size and
budget, as significant as they may be. Rather, its power
stems from the fact that the agency continues to produce
the majority of the actionable intelligence coming out of
the U.S. intelligence community today. As of 1995, NS A
was capable of intercepting the equivalent of the entire
collection of the U.S. Library of Congress (one
quadrillion bits of information) every three hours, and this
figure has increased by several orders of magnitude since
9/1 L— Prior to the 9/11 disaster, approximately 60
percent of the intelligence contained in the Top Secret
President's Daily Brief, sent to President Bush every
morning, was based on SIGINT coming out of NS A.
Today, this number is even higher, as NSA’s access to

global telecommunications has expanded dramatically
since the tragedy.—

A number of senior U.S. military officials have recently
voiced amazement at both the quantity and the quality of
the intelligence that they received from NSA’s huge
listening post at Fort Gordon, which is now known as
NSA/CSS Georgia. One senior U.S. Navy officer who
toured the Fort Gordon station in 2006 was stunned by the
breadth of the intelligence being produced by the site’s
intercept operators, linguists, and analysts, including
hundreds of linguists speaking ten different dialects of
Arabic, as well as Hebrew, Farsi, Pashto and Dari (used in
Afghanistan), and the Kurdish dialect spoken in northern
Iraq.— As one might imagine, the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan dominate much of the SIGINT collection
work now being done at Fort Gordon. There was an
operations center called Cobra Focus, where many of
NSA’s best Arabic linguists were producing vitally
important intelligence on Iraqi insurgent activities from
intercepted cell phone calls relayed to the station via
satellite from inside Iraq. Another new operations center,
whose cover name is Airhandler, was producing the same
kind of intelligence, but concerning Afghanistan. NS A
was also running its own highly sophisticated intelligence
fusion center inside the operations building called
NSA/CSS Geospatial Cell, where agency analysts pulled
together all of the SIGINT being collected by the station
and other NS A listening posts into a finely tuned written

product for the agency’s ravenous customers around the
world. “I was very impressed,” the officer said. “These
guys were producing some of the best intelligence
available on what the bad guys were up to ... We were
definitely getting our money’s worth out of that place.”—
Other lesser-known NS A success stories include a host of
new high-tech collection systems introduced since 9/11
that have allowed the agency to surreptitiously access al
Qaeda, Taliban, and Iraqi insurgent telephone, radio,
walkie-talkie, e-mail, and text-messaging traffic. For
example, one little-known target is the e-mail traffic of
known or suspected terrorists; monitoring this traffic is
managed by a super-secret NS A office at Fort Meade
called Tailored Access Operations (TAO). Working
closely with the CIA and other branches of the U.S.
intelligence community, TAO identifies computer
systems and networks being utilized by foreign terrorists
to pass messages. Once these computers have been
identified and located, a small group of computer hackers
belonging to the U.S. Navy, who call themselves
“computer network exploitation operators,” assigned to
yet another reclusive NS A intercept unit at Fort Meade
called the Remote Operations Center (ROC), break into
the systems electronically to steal the information
contained on the hard drives, as well as monitor the e-
mail traffic coming in and out of the computers.
Intelligence sources indicate that the T AO/ROC computer
search-and-exploitation operations have in a number of

instances provided immensely important intelligence
about foreign terrorist activities around the world.—
Interviews with intelligence officials in Washington
suggest that since 9/11 NS A has improved somewhat its
sometimes rocky relations with its consumers in
Washington and elsewhere around the globe. In the spring
of 2001, the position of deputy director for customer
relations was created within the agency’s SIGINT
Directorate to facilitate better communications between
NS A and its customers. The first head of this office was
Brigadier General Richard Zahner of the U.S. Army.—
But despite this change, unhappiness has remained. NS A
officials contend that since 2001, the ever-increasing
number of its customers in Washington has levied
conflicting requirements on the agency, whose resolution
has necessitated years of often contentious negotiations.
Interviews with intelligence officials reveal that there are
still widespread complaints about NSA’s inability or
unwillingness to share information with other government
agencies. In particular, FBI officials complain about the
lack of cooperation that they have received from NS A
since 9/11. The single largest barrier to the free flow of
intelligence appears to be the compartmentalized nature of
NS A itself, which has prevented an integrated approach to
customer relations between NS A and the rest of the U.S.
intelligence community.—

Problem Areas

Despite the massive budget increases and unfettered
operational discretion granted to the agency by the Bush
administration since 9/11, General Alexander’s NSA
remains a deeply troubled organization bedeviled by a
host of problems, some of its own making, which pose
long-term threats to the agency’s viability as the most
powerful component of the U.S. intelligence community.

The agency is still spending billions of dollars trying to
catch up with the ever-changing and-growing global
telecommunications market, and will continue to do so for
the foreseeable future. New communications devices,
such as the BlackBerry; personal pagers and digital
assistants; and, most recently, Skype, the online service
that allows people to make low-cost telephone calls
through their computers, are all making NSA’s job
increasingly difficult. Technological changes are taking
place so rapidly that even the most stalwart agency
defender admits that NSA will have to continue spending
ever-increasing sums to try to keep pace. In addition, the
wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have forced NSA to spend
billions of dollars rebuilding its ability to intercept and
locate low-tech walkie-talkie and tactical radio signals,
something the agency tried to rid itself of during the late
1990s because NSA officials believed that these were
“legacy” skills that would no longer be needed in the
twenty- first century.—

NSA’s constellation of SIGINT satellites in orbit over

the earth is in trouble, largely because of foul-ups by
program managers at the NRO during the mid-1990s.
Faulty satellite designs, constantly changing collection
requirements, launch delays, and a few spectacular
spacecraft failures have hobbled attempts to put into space
a new generation of SIGINT satellites capable of
monitoring the kinds of unconventional targets that NS A
must now confront. The result has been that over the past
decade the agency’s SIGINT satellites have not proved to
be particularly effective in monitoring insurgent
communications traffic in either Iraq or Afghanistan, nor
have they been of much use in trying to track down al
Qaeda terrorists. Moreover, the enormous amount of time
and money needed to redesign and launch the new
generation of SIGINT satellites needed to monitor the
growing number of cell phone and other personal
communications devices is prohibitive.—

And despite massive investments in new and costly
SIGINT collection technologies since 9/11, NS A is still
experiencing a difficult time gaining access to the
communications of many of its principal global targets,
such as Iran and North Korea, who are increasingly using
buried fiber-optic cables to handle important internal
communications traffic in lieu of radio. The agency is also
finding it increasingly difficult to locate the
communications of al Qaeda and other international
terrorist organizations, who in recent years have made
NSA’s job maddeningly difficult by almost completely

ceasing to use telephones and radios.— A 2005 report to
President Bush urged NS A and the rest of the U.S.
intelligence community to take more risks, stating,
“Regaining signals intelligence access must be a top
priority. The collection agencies are working hard to
restore some of the access that they have lost; and they’ve
had some successes. And again, many of these recent
steps in the right direction are the result of innovative
examples of cross-agency cooperation . . . Success on this
front will require greater willingness to accept financial
costs, political risks, and even human casualties.”—

This has meant that NS A has had to work, albeit very
reluctantly, more closely with its age-old archnemesis, the
CIA, in an effort to regain access to these “hard” targets.
What outside observers of SIGINT often fail to realize is
that in the last fifty years SIGINT has become
increasingly dependent on HUMINT for much of its
success, leading to what can best be described as a
symbiotic relationship between these two intelligence
disciplines. Former CIA director John Deutch wrote in the
magazine Foreign Policy, “Cooperation between human
and technical intelligence, especially communications
intelligence, makes both stronger. Human sources . . . can
provide access to valuable signals intelligence . . .
Communications intercepts can validate information
provided by a human source.”—

A few of these extremely risky operations have broken

to the surface. In January 1999, the Boston Globemid the
Washington Po^/revealed that NS A and the CIA had
helped to create a covert SIGINT system to aid U.N.
weapons inspectors in locating and destroying Iraqi
weapons of mass destruction. This clandestine SIGINT
collection program began in February 1996 and consisted
of commercially available very high frequency (VHF)
intercept receivers provided by the CIA being secretly
placed inside the U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM)
headquarters at Al-Thawra, in the suburbs of Baghdad. In
addition, sophisticated radio scanners hidden inside
backpacks were used by the U.N. inspection teams when
they operated in the field. This system remained in place
until the U.N. weapons inspectors were forced out of Iraq
in December 1998.— In October 2001, Chinese security
officials discovered twenty-seven high-tech listening
devices planted throughout a brand-new Boeing 767 that
was to serve as the Chinese president’s personal aircraft.
The security officials even found bugs in the airplane’s
bathroom and in the headboard of the president’s bed.
Although the bugging operation was a diplomatic
embarrassment, it showed the lengths that the CIA and
NS A were willing to go to in order to listen to what the
Chinese leader was saying.—

But as each of the previous chapters has made clear,
historically NSA’s Achilles’ heel has not been its ability
to collect material from around the world. Rather, what
has hurt the agency the most has been its inability to

process, analyze, and report on the material that it
collects. The agency continues to collect far more than it
can possibly analyze, and it analyzes more than it actually
reports to its customers. In January 2007, NS A director
Alexander admitted to Congress that the agency was still
experiencing great difficulty coping with the ever-
increasing backlog of unprocessed intercepts that were
piling up at NS A headquarters at Fort Meade, many of
which were intercepts of foreign terrorist message
traffic.—

Some agency insiders now believe that NS A is only
able to report on about 1 percent of the data that it
collects, and it is getting harder every day to find within
this 1 percent meaningful intelligence. Senior Defense
and State Department officials refer to this problem as the
“gold to garbage ratio,” which holds that it is becoming
increasingly difficult and more expensive for NS A to find
nuggets of useful intelligence in the ever-growing pile of
garbage that it has to plow through. This has raised some
questions in the minds of U.S. government officials as to
whether all the money being spent on NSA’s SIGINT
program is a worthwhile investment. Former State
Department official Herbert Levin noted, “NS A can point
to things they have obtained that have been useful, but
whether they’re worth the billions that are spent, is a
genuine question in my mind.”—

The Thin Red Line

Today, NS A and the U.S. military’s SIGINT units find
themselves spread perilously thin. The wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan, coupled with the never-ending “global war
on terror,” continue to eat up the vast majority of NSA’s
SIGINT collection and processing resources, forcing the
agency to give short shrift to many important intelligence
targets, such as the former Soviet Union, China, North
Korea, Bosnia, and the national narcotics interdiction
program. The draining away of resources from North
Korea, for example, has been a cause of great concern
since 9/11 because the United States admittedly has
almost no spies operating there, and from a SIGINT
perspective North Korea is an extremely tough target to
monitor.— The same thing has happened in England since
9/11. The British Parliament’s Intelligence and Security
Committee in its June 2003 annual report warned that the
shift of precious intelligence collection resources from
other targets to counterterrorism was creating a dangerous
situation, stating, “These reductions are causing
intelligence gaps to develop, which may mean over time
unacceptable risks will arise in terms of safeguarding
national security and in the prevention and detecting of
Serious Organised Crime.”—

NS A has been forced to continue to strip personnel from
a number of offices within its SIGINT Directorate at Fort
Meade in order to keep its counter terrorism operations
going, as well as maintain U.S. and overseas listening

posts at full strength. The result has been that the number
of complaints from NSA’s customers, especially CIA and
State Department officials, has risen dramatically in the
past several years as more “legacy” targets not connected
to the war on terrorism or the insurgencies in Iraq and
Afghanistan have suffered for lack of attention and
resources.— Sources note that NSA’s inability to dedicate
sufficient resources to monitoring narcotics trafficking in
the western hemisphere has forced the small SIGINT
organization within the Drug Enforcement Administration
(DEA) to largely take over this responsibility.— The
increasingly important role of the DEA, the CIA, and the
military services in the SIGINT field has led, in turn, to
the diminishment of NSA’s control over the national
SIGINT effort. The result has been that NS A has lost
somewhat the all-important “centrality of command” that
it once enjoyed.—

Because of the stress and strain caused by trying to fight
three wars simultaneously, there are now persistent and
pervasive personnel shortages at NS A and in the U.S.
military SIGINT organizations in virtually every critical
specialty. In particular, the agency and the U.S. military
have experienced significant problems recruiting and
retaining linguists who are fluent enough in the exotic
languages spoken in Iraq and Afghanistan. Attempts by
NSA in 2001-2002 to hire first-generation immigrants
living in the United States who speak Pashto, Urdu, and

Dari, the main languages spoken in Afghanistan,
immediately ran into roadblocks imposed by the
omnipresent security officials, who forbade their use. An
American intelligence officer was quoted as saying,
“NS A cannot get anyone through the background check
and vetting process . . . They have created an
unachievably high standard for hiring.”—

The U.S. military’s SIGINT units are in even worse
shape. The result of declining reenlistment rates and
deteriorating morale has been pervasive personnel
shortages throughout the military SIGINT components
along with a commensurate decline in unit readiness
levels.

Interviews with current and former U.S. military
intelligence officials confirm that the U.S. military’s
SIGINT system, like the U.S. military as a whole, is deep
in crisis. Resources everywhere are stretched to the limit.
Interviews confirm that the number-one problem facing
the military SIGINT system is personnel, or lack thereof.
Over the past six years, frequent and lengthy deployments
in Iraq and/or Afghanistan, coupled with the military’s
extremely unpopular “stop-loss” policy of arbitrarily
extending terms of service, including those of many
SIGINT specialists, such as Arabic linguists, have for all
intents and purposes exhausted the military’s corps of
SIGINT personnel. As a result, attrition rates among
military SIGINT personnel are high and getting worse,
with some SIGINT units reporting that more than 50

percent of their first-term recruits are not reenlisting
because of the severe hardships associated with repeated
tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a result,
hundreds of veteran noncommissioned officers and
enlisted SIGINT intercept technicians and linguists have
chosen to leave the service because of the strain that
frequent deployments are having on their families and
their own mental health. Interviews with over a dozen
currently serving military SIGINT operators reveal that
there is one common thread running through their
complaints about current conditions — an all-consuming
desire for a sense of normalcy in their lives.—

There have also been pervasive equipment shortages to
contend with, brought on by the intensive demands of
fighting three wars simultaneously. These shortages have
meant that SIGINT collection equipment has to be kept in
Iraq and Afghanistan, leaving very little for troops to train
on upon their return to the United States from their
overseas tours of duty. As a result, training and readiness
levels of military SIGINT units based in the United States
have declined steadily over the past six years. Army and
Marine Corps intelligence commanders have confirmed
that the equipment in the military’s SIGINT units is worn
out from nonstop usage in the harsh and unforgiving field
environments of Iraq and Afghanistan and is in urgent
need of refurbishment or replacement. Moreover,
replacement equipment purchases have not kept pace with
field losses. Shortages of highly skilled maintenance

personnel and spare parts have led to frequent equipment
outages at inopportune moments in Afghanistan and
Iraq.— For example, widespread computer problems
meant that the army SIGINT platoon assigned to Forward
Operating Base Loyalty in east Baghdad spent the entire
month of February 2006 “performing duties not related to
their specialty.”—

These anecdotal conclusions were confirmed by a 2006
report by Major General Barbara Fast, the former
commandant of the U.S. Army Intelligence Center at Fort
Huachuca, in Arizona, which found that army intelligence
specialists were spending more than one year out of every
two deployed overseas, and that as a result, reenlistment
rates among these specialists, including SIGINT
collectors, were falling fast. Many units returning from
Iraq were reporting that in addition to being exhausted
and short of personnel, they had had to leave behind their
equipment, which meant that they had nothing to train
with once they got back to the United States. Fast’s
conclusion was that the intense operations tempo
associated with trying to fight three wars simultaneously
was “consuming the MI [military intelligence] force.”—

Searching for a Cure

Today, NSA’s modernization programs are, to varying
degrees, well over budget and years behind schedule.
Recent revelations in the press show that yet another of

the agency’s hugely expensive modernization programs,
Turbulence, has also experienced significant delays and
cost overruns, raising doubts within the U.S. intelligence
community as to whether it will ever work the way it was
originally envisioned. The serious problems being
experienced by NS A in bringing this program to fruition
prompted intense criticism from members of the Senate
intelligence committee during a rare public hearing in
March 2007, where they forcefully made clear their
concern about where NSA’s transformation efforts were
headed, writing, “NSA’s transformation program,
Trailblazer, has been terminated because of severe
management problems, and its successor. Turbulence, is
experiencing the same management deficiencies that have
plagued the NS A since at least the end of the Cold
War.”22

But these problems may, in fact, be the tip of the
iceberg. As strange as it may sound, one of the most
urgent problems facing NS A is a severe shortage of
electrical power, which threatens to derail the agency’s
efforts at Fort Meade unless fixed. It will come as no
surprise that NS A is a massive consumer of electricity,
which, as every American consumer knows, is an
increasingly expensive commodity. As of 2000, NSA’s
annual electricity bill from Baltimore Gas and Electric
amounted to twenty-one million dollars. But higher
gasoline prices and the continued deterioration of the
national electricity grid resulted in NSA’s annual bill

rising to almost thirty million dollars by 2007.—
However, the rising cost of electricity is not what is
currently strangling NS A. Rather, during the 1990s and
post 9/11 era, the agency neglected to build new power
generators needed to run the ever-growing number of
computers and other high-tech systems that the agency
has been buying en masse since 9/11. The situation has
become so grave that in many NS A offices at Fort Meade
the installation of new computers and data processing
systems has been put on hold because there is not enough
electricity to run them, and NSA’s power grid has become
so overtaxed that there have been occasional brownouts of
key operational offices for as much as half a day.
However, press reports indicate some resistance within
the Office of Management and Budget to giving NS A
additional funds because the agency has once again failed
to provide a detailed accounting of why the money is
needed or how it will be spent.—

As a result, much of the groundswell of support that
NS A once enjoyed inside Congress and the U.S.
intelligence community after 9/11 has slowly slipped
away as it has become clear that the agency’s
modernization and reform efforts are not being effectively
managed. A former NS A official quoted in a press report
said, “Right after Sept. 1 1 and the ensuing period, I think
NS A could have gotten anything they wanted. They lost
the support because they didn’t handle it properly.”—

So one of the top items on General Alexander’s to-do
list today is to try to right the ship and put NSA’s internal
reforms and modernization efforts back on track, while at
the same time increasing the agency’s productivity and
maintaining its reputation within the U.S. intelligence
community. Fixing all of these problems at once will not
be easy or cheap. In January 2007, NS A asked Congress
for an additional one billion dollars in supplemental
funding, and another one billion for 2008. All this was on
top of NSA’s huge eight-billion-dollar annual budget
already approved by Congress.—

And yet, despite all the money, resources, and high-
level attention being lavished on NS A, there are signs that
the agency’s “golden days” may be almost over. Agency
insiders interviewed for this book understand that
following the Bush administration, a greater degree of
fiscal austerity and stricter oversight controls will almost
certainly return. A now-retired senior NS A official said it
best: “I guess we are going to have to go back to the ‘bad
old days’ of doing more with less. It was a great ride
while it lasted.”—

AFTERWORD

To Live in Perilous Times
NS A in the Obama Administration

The near collapse of the U.S. economy in September-
October 2008, followed by the November 4, 2008,
election of Barack Obama as the forty- fourth president of
the United States, presented a new set of serious problems
for NSA’s director. Lieutenant General Keith Alexander.
The steep downturn of the economy meant that the
agency’s annual bud get submission to Congress had to be
completely rewritten to take into account the new climate
of fiscal austerity. But it was the president-elect, a former
constitutional law professor who had been critical of the
Bush administration’s domestic eavesdropping programs
on the campaign trail, who potentially posed a more
serious problem for the agency.

In December 2008, NS A sent classified briefing books
to the president-elect and senior members of his national
security transition team that explained the agency’s
mission and capabilities. The documents emphasized that
NS A was a completely different organization from the

one that existed eight years earlier when George W. Bush
had been elected. The empire that NS A commanded had
doubled from thirty-two thousand military and civilian
personnel in 2001 to more than sixty thousand, and its
annual bud get has gone from four billion dollars to about
ten billion, accounting for roughly 20 percent of all U.S.
government spending on foreign intelligence. Billions of
dollars had been spent acquiring new hardware and
software meant to improve NSA’s ability to collect,
process, analyze, and report the staggering volume of
material intercepted every day. And although there had
been costly missteps along the way, this effort was
beginning to pay dividends. NSA’s intelligence
production had rebounded dramatically, and the agency
was once again producing much of the best information
within the U.S. intelligence community.^

The NS A briefing papers emphasized the vital
importance of the signals intelligence (SIGINT) produced
by the agency since General Alexander had become
director in August 2005. NSA’s coverage of insurgent e-
mails, text messages, and cell phone traffic had been
crucial in helping General David Petraeus locate Iraqi
insurgent cells operating in and around Baghdad in the
spring of 2007, which were then hit by a systematic
cyberattack by NS A beginning in May 2007. ^Then
tactical intercept teams belonging to a secretive NS A field
unit called the Joint Expeditionary SIGINT Terminal
Response Unit (JESTR) helped U.S. military combat units

destroy dozens of insurgent cells during the summer and
fall of 2007. In Afghanistan, NS A and the U.S. military
SIGINT collection efforts against the Taliban were
steadily improving. NS A was dedicating more SIGINT
collection and analytic resources to monitoring Taliban
commanders talking on their cellular and satellite
telephones inside Afghanistan and northern Pakistan, and
the U.S. military had fielded new airborne and ground-
based collection systems that dramatically improved
SIGINT coverage of insurgent walkie-talkie
communications traffic on Afghan battlefields.

The briefing papers emphasized that these examples
were only part of NSA’s contribution to the overall
national intelligence effort. Several constellations of
SIGINT satellites parked in orbit above the earth were
providing excellent coverage of a host of key targets,
including Iran. More than six hundred intercept operators
working for NSA’s super-secret Tailored Access
Operations office were secretly tapping into thousands of
foreign computer systems and accessing password-
protected hard drives and e-mail accounts of targets
around the world. This highly classified program, known
as Stumpcursor, had proved to be critically important
during the 2007 surge in Iraq, where it was credited with
single-handedly identifying and locating over one
hundred Iraqi and al Qaeda insurgent cells in and around
Baghdad. Dozens of listening posts hidden inside
American embassies and consulates — operated by the

joint NSA-CIA SIGINT organization known as the
Special Collection Service — were producing excellent
intelligence information in areas in Asia, Africa, and the
Middle East. Information produced by Green Beret
SIGINT teams had been instrumental in helping the
Philippine military capture or kill several high-ranking
officials of the Muslim extremist group Abu Sayyaf in
2006 and 2007. U.S. Navy SIGINT operators riding on
attack submarines were collecting vital intelligence on
foreign military forces and international narcotics
traffickers as part of a program called Aquador. And the
agency was well along in its planning to create a new
organization — called United States Cyber Command —
that would both attack enemy communications in
cyberspace and defend the U.S. telecommunications
infrastructure.

But NS A officials still needed to address the agency’s
controversial domestic eavesdropping programs, which
had finally been placed under the control of the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) in 2007. On July
10, 2008, President Bush had signed into law the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 Amendments Act of
2008, which granted retroactive immunity from lawsuits
to the telecommunications companies who had
collaborated with NS A. Obama, then a senator from
Illinois, had reluctantly voted for the bill after failing to
get the immunity provisions for the telecommunications
companies stripped from the legislation. President Bush’s

director of national intelligence, Admiral Mike
McConnell, held a face- to- face meeting with Obama in
Chicago in December to try to assuage the president-
elect’s lingering concerns about the domestic
eavesdropping programs. But according to a member of
Obama’s transition team, when the meeting was over, the
president-elect remained troubled by what the agency had
done: He was especially concerned with the legality of
NSA’s domestic spying activities.

After President Obama was inaugurated on January 20,
2009, he and his national security advisers made the
decision to focus on the country’s more pressing
economic problems rather than waste precious political
capital by dredging up the misdeeds of the past
administration. But on July 10, 2009, the Office of the
Director of National Intelligence (DNI) released an
unclassified summary of a top- secret report that raised
some very serious questions about the legality,
effectiveness, and overall value of the NS A domestic
eavesdropping programs.^

First, the report confirmed that the Justice Department
legal briefs written by John Yoo in 2001-2002, which
served as the legal predicate for the NS A eavesdropping
programs, were filled with so many “serious factual and
legal flaws” that they had to be rewritten in their entirety
in 2004 in order to bring them into conformance with the
law, which raises the obvious question of whether the
NS A domestic eavesdropping programs were legal to

begin with. Second, the report suggested that the
shoddiness of these legal opinions may have jeopardized
all of the arrests and/or convictions of terrorist suspects
that were based in part on intelligence derived from the
NS A eavesdropping. And third, the DNI report cast grave
doubts about the claims previously made by former vice
president Dick Cheney and NS A director General Michael
Hayden about the importance of the NS A domestic
eavesdropping to the overall U.S. counterterrorism
program. The report revealed that analysts at the National
Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) in McLean, Virginia,
could only come up with a few cases where intelligence
derived from the NS A eavesdropping programs “may
have contributed to a counterterrorism success,” and FBI
officials stated that the NS A intelligence data “generally
played a limited role in the FBI’s overall counterterrorism
efforts.” These were hardly stunning endorsements of the
value of the NS A eavesdropping programs given the vast
sums of money spent on them to date.

But NSA’s eavesdropping programs continue, as
evidenced by the revelations that in December 2008 and
January 2009, NS A intercepted a dozen or so e-mail
messages between a U.S. Army psychiatrist named Major
Nidal Malik Hasan and a radical Muslim cleric in Yemen.
The messages were examined by FBI agents with the
Joint Terrorism Task Force in Washington and deemed
not to be sufficiently alarming to warrant further action.
On November 5, 2009, Major Hasan killed thirteen of his

fellow soldiers at Fort Hood in Texas, and wounded
dozens more.

Less than two months later, on Christmas Day 2009, a
twenty- three- year old Nigerian named Umar Farouk
Abdulmutallab failed to detonate an explosive device
sewn into his underwear as his Northwestern Airlines
flight from Amsterdam was on final approach to Detroit
Metro Airport. In mid- October 2009, NS A intercepted
some fragmentary al Qaeda telephone traffic coming from
inside Yemen indicating that an unidentified Nigerian was
being trained for a planned terrorist attack. On November
18, 2009, Abdulmutallab ’s father told officials at the U.S.
embassy in Abuja, Nigeria, that his son had just sent him
text messages from Yemen that showed that the boy had
become a jihadi militant. But the analysts at the NCTC
somehow failed to connect the reports from the U.S.
embassy in Nigeria with the NSA intercepts. So
Abdulmutallab ’s name was not put on the “do not fly”
watch list, and he was allowed to board his flight that
fateful Christmas morning. As this book goes to print,
these unsettling episodes are still under investigation, but
both raise a host of troubling questions about who is still
being monitored and why, and more importantly, whether
the U.S. govemmenfs massive security apparatus is
capable of identifying impending threats, no matter how
much intelligence NSA collects.

January 2010
Washington, D.C.

A cknowledgments

For the past year the National Security Archive in
downtown Washington, D.C., has been my home away
from home. Without the generous and unstinting support
of the archive’s director, Tom Blanton, and his staff of
dedicated professionals I would not have been able to
complete this work. Special thanks go to the archive’s
general counsel, Meredith Fuchs, and longtime friend Dr.
William Burr, both of whom kept me on track and helped
me avoid pitfalls in the road.

Three longtime friends and colleagues deserve special
thanks for the incredible support they provided me. For
the past twenty-five years. Dr. Jeffrey T. Richelson has
been a veritable fount of knowledge and wisdom about
the U.S. intelligence community, generously providing
me with thousands of pages of documents from his
collection and pointing me to where more could be found.
He is a walking encyclopedia about the U.S. intelligence
community. My friend and coauthor Dr. Cees Wiebes did
more to push me along than just about anyone else, even
if I did not want to go. Every author needs someone like
him to keep them honest and their eyes on the prize. And
last but not least, I owe a debt of gratitude to my friend
and colleague of many years Rosemary Lark, without

whom this project would never have been completed.

Over the past twenty-five years, hundreds of individuals
freely provided me with documents, leads, and advice. I
wish to particularly acknowledge to assistance of the
following individuals: Dr. Richard J. Aldrich, Dr. David
Alvarez, Joseph S. Bermudez Jr., Dr. Dwayne A. Day,
Ralph Erskine, Angela Gendron, Nicky Hager, Seymour
M. Hersh, Dr. Robert S. Hopkins, Alf R. Jacobsen, Dr.
David Kahn, Miriam A. Kleiman, Dr. Edwin E. Moi'se,
Dr. Olav Riste, Bill Robinson, Dr. Martin Rudner, Susan
Strange, Dr. Athan Theoharis, and Dr. Wesley Wark. Any
omissions are purely the fault of the author.

During the past twenty-five years, it has been my
pleasure to sit down for lengthy and candid conversations
with dozens of former and current officials of the NS A
and other agencies of the U.S. intelligence community,
many of whom have sadly passed away since I began my
research. These men and women helped me sketch out the
history of an agency that remains to this day largely
invisible, even to those who hold a Top Secret Codeword
security clearance. Almost all did so with the
understanding that I would not name them, and I have
respected their wishes, despite the fact that a number of
these individuals have since passed away. Without their
help I never would have been able to even begin to
understand what NS A does or how important it is.

My heartfelt thanks go to Colonel William J. Williams,
USAF (ret.), and his staff at the National Security

Agency’s Center for Cryptologic History (CCH). The
work of the CCH historians runs throughout this history.
It is fair to say that this book would not have been
possible without them.

And finally, I would also like to extend his most
heartfelt thanks to the staff of the National Archives at
College Park, Maryland, for helping me conduct my
research over the past two decades. I will always remain
deeply indebted to the late John E. Taylor, the doyen of
military archivists at the National Archives, whose
encyclopedic knowledge of the records based on his fifty
years at the archives was unparalleled anywhere. His
passing in September 2008 at the age of eighty-seven
marks the end of an era. The staff of the NARA Library at
College Park, especially its amiable head Jeff Hartley,
helped me work the CIA’s CREST database of
declassified documents through many trials and
tribulations, and stoically processed the vast amount of
declassified documents that I brought to their desks day
after day without complaint. They are wonderful people.

My deepest gratitude goes to Peter Ginna, my publisher
at Bloomsbury Press, who to his eternal credit took a risk
and agreed to publish this book. Michael O’Connor and
Pete Beatty did the heavy lifting at Bloomsbury getting
this opus ready for publication. Special thanks go to my
editor James O. Wade, who performed a Herculean effort
to get this manuscript into final form. And last but not
least, my agent, Rick Broadhead, worked tirelessly on this

project, believing implicitly in the importance of what I
was trying to accomplish.

Notes Glossary

AIA Air Intelligence Agency

ASA Army Security Agency

CALL Center for Army Lessons Learned
CCH Center for Cryptologic History, Fort George
G. Meade, Maryland

CNSG Crane Naval Security Group Archives
DCI Director of Central Intelligence
DDEL Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene,
Kansas

DDRS Declassified Document Retrieval Service
DOCID Document Identification number
DOD Department of Defense

FBI Federal Bureau of Investigations
FOIA Obtained by Freedom of Information Act
request

GPO Government Printing Office
HCC Historic Cryptologic Collection, contained in
Record Group 457 at the National Archives,
College Park, Maryland

HSTL Harry S. Truman Library, Independence,
Missouri

INR State Department, Bureau of Intelligence and
Research

INSCOM U.S. Army Intelligence and Security
Command

JCS Joint Chiefs of Staff

JFKL John F. Kennedy Library, Boston,

Massachusetts

LBJL Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, Austin,
Texas

NA, CP National Archives, College Park,

Maryland

NARA National Archives and Records

Administration, Washington, D.C.

NIO IIM National Intelligence Officer Interagency
Intelligence Memorandum

NS A OH NS A Oral History, held by the NSA’s

Center for Cryptologic History, Fort George G.
Meade, Maryland, and obtained through FOIA

PRO Public Records Office, now National

Archives of the United Kingdom, Kew, England

RG- Record Group

RUMRA NS A internal designation for the Russian
communications target: “RU” = Russia; “M” =
Army; “RA” = mainline Morse code circuit

SSA Signal Security Agency

Notes

Prologue

L Background and character of Clarke from U.S. Army
biographical data sheet, Brigadier General Carter Weldon
Clarke, USA (Ret.); interviews with W. Preston
Corderman, Frank B. Rowlett, Morton A. Rubin; NS A,
oral history. Interview with Carter W. Clarke, May 3,
1983; NSA OH-01-74 to NSA OH-14-81, oral history.
Interview with Frank B. Rowlett, 1976, p. 33, NSA FOIA.
See also memorandum, Ohly to McNamey, Your
Proposals with Respect to the Handling oj
Communications Intelligence and Communications
Security, May 12, 1949, p. 1, RG-330, entry 199, box 97,
file: CD 22-1-23, NA, CP; Henry C. Clausen and Bruce
Lee, Pearl Harbor: Final JudgementQSQw York: Crown,
1992), p. 24.

Z NSA OH-01-74 to NSA OH- 14-81, oral history.
Interview with Frank B. Rowlett, June 26, 1974, p. 76,
NSA FOIA.

U For the genesis of the SIGINT effort against the USSR
in 1943, see Robert Louis Benson and Cecil Phillips,
History of VENONAif oxi Meade, MD: Center for
Cryptologic History, 1995), vol. 1, p. 12, NSA FOIA;

Robert Louis Benson and Michael Warner, eds.,
VENONA: Soviet Espionage and the American Response,
7 9JP-7 95 /(Washington, DC: Center for the Study of
Intelligence, 1996), p. xiii. For the intense secrecy
surrounding the Russian code-breaking effort, see
memorandum, Corderman to Taylor, Draft of “Priorities
Schedule, ''MdiYch 6, 1943, and memorandum, Taylor to
Corderman, SPSIS 311.5 — General — Draft of “Priorities
Schedule f March 8, 1943, both in RG-457, HCC, box
1432, file: SSS Intercept Priorities, NA, CP; Benson and
Phillips, History of VENONA, vol. 1, p. 16 and fn27. For
the U.S. Navy’s parallel SIGINT effort against the Soviet
Union, see Naval Communications Activity, Russian
Language Section: July 1943-January 1948, NS A FOIA
via Dr. David Alvarez; Dr. Thomas R. Johnson, American
Cryptology During the Cold War, 1 945-1 989(¥ovt
Meade, MD: Center for Cryptologic History, 1995), bk. 1,
The Struggle for Centralization, 1945-1960, p. 159, NSA
FOIA. For the problematic cooperation between the army
and navy on the Russian problem, see Thomas L. Bums,
The Origins of the National Security Agency: 1940-
7952(Fort Meade, MD: Center for Cryptologic History,
1990), p. 25, NSA FOIA.

4, SRH-364, History of the Signal Security Agency, 1939-
1945, vol. 1, p. 139ff, RG-457, entry 9002 Special
Research Histories, NA, CP; “Hot Weather Policy,” NSA
Newsletter, June 1956, p. 23; Debbie DuBois, “Those

Good Old Days,” NSA Newsletter, December 1979, p. 7;
Jack Gurin, “Dear Old Arlington Hall,” NSA Newsletter,
February 1981, p. 14, all NSA FOIA; “From Coeds to
Codewords: How a Girls College Became the Nerve
Center for US AS A’ s Global Operations,” Hallmark,
September 1970, p. 8, INSCOM FOIA; “Forty One and
Strong: Arlington Hall Station,” INSCOM Journal, June
1983, pp. 7-12, INSCOM FOIA; U.S. Army Intelligence
and Security Command, INSCOM and Its
//en7age( Arlington, VA: INSCOM History Office, 1985),
Special Historical Series, pp. 137-38, INSCOM FOIA.

^ For keeping the SIGINT effort against the Soviets a
secret from the British, see Benson and Phillips, History
of VENONA, vol. 1, p. 16 and fn27. For details of the
British code-breaking effort against the USSR during
World War II, including the fact that this operation was
kept secret from the United States, see Benson and
Phillips, History of VENONA, vol. 1, pp. 30-31; Bums,
Origins of the National Security Agency, p. 25; NSA OH-
01-79, oral history. Interview with Brigadier John H.
Tiltman (ret.), January 30, 1979, p. 1, NSA FOIA; NSA
OH-20-93, oral history. Interview with Oliver R. Kirby,
June 11, 1993, pp. 10-11, NSA FOIA; handwritten notes
labeled “CDR Dunderdale,” undated, in OP-20-G
organizational file, NSA FOIA.

6. Hallock was one of the first men to excavate the old

capital of the Achaemenid civilization at Persepolis in
Iran. Recruited into the Signal Security Agency in 1942
because of his linguistic skills, Hallock initially worked
on solving Vichy French and German Enigma machine
cipher systems before being transferred to the Special
Problems Section in 1943. Hallock background from
Robert L. Benson, Introductory History of VENONA(¥ovi
Meade, MD: Center for Cryptologic History), p. 2; SRH-
361, History of the Signal Security Agency, \o\. 2, The
General Cryptanaly tic Problems, pp. 114, 118, 129, 236,
238, 253, RG-457, entry 9002 Special Research Histories,
NA, CP. Hallock was also the author of a number of
scholarly books, including The Chicago Syllabary and the
Louvre Syllabary{Ch\cdigo’. University of Chicago Press,
1940) and Persepolis Fortification Tablets{C\\\cdigo’.
University of Chicago Press, 1969). For details of
Hallock’ s breakthrough, see Weekly Report for Section B
III b9 for Week Ending 1 October 1943, p. 1; Weekly
Report for Section B III b9 for Week Ending 8 October
1945, p. 2; Weekly Report for Section B III b9 for Week
Ending 19 November 1945, p. 1, all in RG-457, HCC, box
1 1 14, file SSA Bill Weekly Reports, NA, CP.

T David A. Hatch, “Venona: An Overview,” American
Intelligence Journal, vol. 17, nos. 1-2 (1996): p. 72.

8^ For change in priorities and expansion of SIGINT
effort against neutrals and friendly nations, see

memorandum, McCormack to Clarke, S.S.B. Priorities,
January 26, 1943, RG-457, HCC, box 1432, file: SSS
Intercept Priorities, NA, CP; memorandum, Taylor to
Clarke and McCormack, S.S.B. Priorities, February 3,
1943, RG-457, HCC, box 1432, file: SSS Intercept
Priorities, NA, CP; memorandum. Strong to Chief Signal
Officer, March 8, 1943, RG-457, HCC, box 1025, file:
C/A Solutions, Intercept Evaluations, 1943^4, NA, CP.
For not wanting to be bullied after the end of the war, see
Lietuenant ( j.g.) J. V. Connorton, The Status of U.S.
Naval Communication Intelligence After World War II,
December 17, 1943, p. 9, RG-457, HCC, box 1008, file:
Post War Planning Files, NA, CP.

9^ For putting distance between the U.S. and British
SIGINT efforts, see memorandum, Taylor to Clarke,
Cooperation Between United States Signal Intelligence
Service and British Y Service, April 5, 1943, RG-457,
HCC, box 1417, file: Army and Navy COMINT
Regulations and Papers, NA, CP. For secrecy of the
SIGINT effort against the USSR, see memorandum,
Corderman to Taylor, Draft of ‘Priorities
Schedule, 6, 1943, and memorandum, Taylor to

Corderman, SPSIS 311.5 — General — Draft of “Priorities
Schedule, 'March 8, 1943, both in RG-457, HCC, box
1432, file: SSS Intercept Priorities, NA, CP.

1 : Roller-Coaster Ride

L Included in the thirty- seven thousand personnel were
approximately seventeen thousand assigned to dozens of
tactical COMINT collection units stationed overseas.
SRH-277, “A Lecture on Communications Intelligence by
RADM E.E. Stone, DIRAFSA,” p. 12, RG-457, entry
9002 Special Research Histories, NA, CP. For the number
of codes and ciphers being exploited in June 1945, see
SSA General Cryptanalytic Branch Organization Chart,
June 1, 1945, p. B-2, RG-457, HCC, box 1004, file SSA
Organization Charts, NA, CP. For 88,747 diplomatic
messages, see “The General Cryptanalytic Branch,” in
SSA, Annual Report Fiscal Year 1945, General
Cryptanalysis Branch (B-3): July 1944-July 1945, RG-
457, HCC, box 1380, file General Cryptanalysis Branch
Annual Report 1945, NA, CP.

Z Memorandum, Adjutant General to Commanding
Generals, Establishment of the Army Security Agency,
September 6, 1945; memorandum. Adjutant General to
Chief, Military Intelligence Service, Establishment of the
Army Security Agency, September 19, 1945;

memorandum. Adjutant General to Commanding General,
Army Service Forces, Transfer of Signal Security Agency
to Army Security Agency, September 21, 1945;

memorandum. Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2 to
Commanding Generals, Establishment of the Army
Security Agency, November 7, 1945; memo for record.
General Provisions of the Army Security Agency, May 17,

1946, all in RG-165, entry 421 ABC files, box 269, file:
ABC 350.05 (8 Dec 43), sec. 1, NA, CP.

3^ SRMN-084, The Evolution of the Navy's Cryptologic
Organization, p. 9, RG-457, NA, CP.

4, Elliott E. Okins, To Spy or Not to 5/?y(Chula Vista, CA:
Pateo Publishing Co., 1985), pp. 150-51; SRH-039, Unit
History, 2nd Army Air Force Radio Squadron, Mobile,
April 1945-June 1946, p. 9, RG-457, entry 9002 Special
Research Histories, NA, CP.

^ Oral history. Interview with Pat M. Holt #1: Years in
Journalism, September 9, 1980, p. 13, U.S.

C SRH-364, History of SS A, p. 237, RG-457, entry 9002
Special Research Histories, NA, CP; National Cryptologic
School, On Watch: Profiles from the National Security
Agency's Past 40 Years(Yoxt Meade, MD: NSA/CSS,
1986), pp. 14-16, NSA FOIA; NSA, oral history.
Interview with Frank B. Rowlett, 1976, p. 357, NSA
FOIA.

T The overall strength of the combined army and navy
COMINT organizations went from 37,000 on duty on VJ
Day to only 7,500 men and women at the end of
December 1945. The army COMINT organization’s
command strength went from 10,600 men and women on
VJ Day plus 17,000 personnel assigned to tactical
intercept units to only 5,000 by the end of December

1945. The navy COMINT organization’s staff levels went
from 10,051 men and women on duty on VJ Day to only
2,500 personnel on the organization’s rolls at the end of
December 1945. For the impact of army personnel losses,
see ASA, Summary Annual Report of the Army Security
Agency, Fiscal Year 1946, July 31, 1947, p. 7, INSCOM
FOIA; memorandum, Johnston to Assistant Chief of
Staff, G-2, Report of Signal Security Agency and Second
Signal Service Battalion Personnel Strength, December 4,
1945, RG-319, entry 47B Army G-2 Decimal File 1941-
1948, box 568, file 320.2 5/1/45-12/31/45 (31 Dec 44),
NA, CP; ASA, “Minutes of 38th Staff Meeting Held 4
December 1945 at 1300,” in SRMA-011, SSS/SSA/ASA
Staff Meeting Minutes: 25 November 1942-17 February
1948, pp. 271, RG-457, NA, CP. For the impact of navy
personnel losses, see memorandum, Wenger to OP-20,
Report of Progress in OP-20-G During Absence of CNC,
December 5, 1945, Enclosure 1, p. 1, RG-38, CNSG
Library, box 114, file 5750/220 OP-20 Memos Covering
Various Subjects 1942^5, part 4 of 5, NA, CP; Op-20-A-
vb (5 Jan 1946), Serial: 1002P20, memorandum. Chief of
Naval Communications to Chief of Naval Operations,
Assistant Chief of Naval Communications for
Communications Intelligence — Recommendation for
Promotion to the Rank of Commodore, U.S. Navy,
January 7, 1946, p. 1, RG-38, CNSG Library, box 81, file
5420/36 Dyer Board 1945, NA, CP.

L ASA, Summary Annual Report of the Army Security
Agency: Fiscal Year 1946, July 31, 1947, pp. 2\-22,
INSCOM FOIA; SRMA-011, SSS/SSA/ASA Staff Meeting
Minutes, p. 265, RG-457, NA, CP; memorandum, OP-23
to OP-02, Future Status of U.S. Naval Communications
Intelligence Activities — Comments On, January 16, 1946;
memorandum, Redman to OP-02, Future Status of U.S.
Naval Communications Intelligence Activities, January
23, 1946; memorandum, Inglis to OP-02, Future Status oj
U.S. Naval Communications Intelligence Activities,
January 25, 1946, all in RG-80, SecNav/CNO Top Secret
Decimal File 1944-1947, box 42, file 1946 A8, NA, CP.

9^ SSA, “Minutes of 25th Staff Meeting Held 14 August
1945 at 1300,” in SRMA-011, SSS/SSA/ASA Staff Meeting
Minutes: 25 November 1942-17 February 1948, p. 216,
RG-457, NA, CP; “Minutes of the Fourteenth Meeting of
the Army-Navy Cryptanalytic Research and Development
Committee,” August 22, 1945, p. 6, RG-38, CNSG
Library, box 92, file 5420/169 ANCIB (2 of 2), NA, CP;
ASA, Summary Annual Report of the Army Security
Agency: Fiscal Year 1946, July 31, 1947, p. 24, INSCOM
FOIA; NSA OH- 1 5-82, oral history. Interview with Ann
Z. Caracristi, July 16, 1982, p. 29, NSA FOIA.

10. Copies of these decrypts can be found in the
collection of T-series messages in RG-457, HCC, box
521, file Decrypted Diplomatic Traffic: T3101-T3200,

NA, CP.

11. Andrew and Leslie Cockburn, Dangerous Liaison:
The Inside Story of the U.S. -Israeli Covert
Relationship(HQSM York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1991),
pp. 36-37; NSA-OH-1 1-82, oral history. Interview with
Captain Wesley A. Wright, USN, May 24, 1982, p. 66,
NSA FOIA.

12. For ASA military targets, see ASA Descriptive
Dictionary of Cryptologic rerm^(Laguna Hills, CA:
Aegean Park Press, 1997), pp. 4, 11, 21, 23, 36, 62, 65,
95, 111, 113, 143, 150. For OP-20-G’s successes with
foreign naval ciphers, see War Diary Report OP-20-G-
4A: 1 September to 1 October 1945, October 1, 1945, p.
5, RG-38, CNSG Library, file 5750/160, NA, CP;
“Minutes of the Sixteenth Meeting of the Army-Navy
Cryptanalytic Research and Development Committee,”
October 17, 1945, p. 11, RG-38, CNSG Library, box 92,
file 5420/169 ANCIB (2 of 2), NA, CP; G4A War Diary
Summary for November 1945, December 4, 1945, p. 1,
RG-38, CNSG Library, file 5750/160, NA, CP; G4A War
Diary Summary for May 1946, June 6, 1946, p. 1, RG-38,
CNSG Library, file 5750/160, NA, CP; memorandum,
OP-20-3-GY-A to OP-20-3, Status of Work Report on
Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and French Language
Systems, January 16, 1946, RG-38, CNSG Library, box
22, file 3222/85: Non-Japanese Crypto- Systems

Processed — Apr 43-Aug 45 (3 of 3), NA, CP.

13. Memorandum, OP-23 to OP-02, Future Status ofU.S.
Naval Communication Intelligence Activities — Comments
on, January 16, 1946, RG-38, CNSG Library, box 114,
file 5750/220 OP-20 Memos Covering Various Subjects,
1942-1945 (4 of 5), NA, CP; memorandum, Redman to
OP-02, Future Status of U.S. Naval Communication
Intelligence Activities, January 23, 1946, and
memorandum, Inglis to OP-02, Future Status of U.S.
Naval Communications Intelligence Activities, January
25, 1946, both in RG-80, SecNav/CNO TS, box 42, file
1946 A8,NA, CP.

14. For an example of a Chinese Nationalist military
decrypt, see Navy Department, Chief of Naval
Operations, Oriental Communication Intelligence
Summary, April 11, 1946, RG-38, entry 345 Radio
Intelligence Summaries 1941-1946, box 122, file 1-30
April 1946 (2 of 2), NA, CP. For decrypted Chinese
Communist radio traffic, see Navy Department, Chief of
Naval Operations, Oriental Communication Intelligence
Summary, April 26, 1946, RG-38, entry 345 Radio
Intelligence Summaries 1941-1946, box 122, file 1-30
April 1946 (2 of 2), NA, CP.

15. Memorandum, Craig to Acting Deputy Chief of Staff,
Intelligence on Russia, March 14, 1946, RG-319, entry
154 OPD TS Decimal File 1946-1948, box 75, file P&O

350.05 TS (Section I) Cases 1-44, NA, CP;
memorandum, G.A.L. to Hull, Intelligence on Russia,
March 22, 1946, RG-319, entry 154 OPD TS Decimal
File 1946-1948, box 75, file P&O 350.05 TS (Section I)
Cases 1-44, NA, CP; memorandum, Starbird to Hull,
Intelligence in Europe, April 3, 1946, RG-319, entry 154
OPD TS Decimal File 1946-1948, box 75, file P&O
350.05 TS (Section I) Cases 1-44, NA, CP.

16. A heavily redacted version of the BRUSA Agreement
was recently released to the author, for which see British-
U.S. Communication Intelligence Agreement, March 5,
1946, DOCID 3216600, NS A FOIA. See also SRMA-
011, SSS/SSA/ASA Staff Meeting Minutes: 25 November
1942-17 February 1948, pp. 293, 321, RG-457, NA, CP;
Army-Navy Communication Intelligence Board
Organizational Bulletin No. 1, June 1945, RG-457, HCC,
box 1364, NA, CP; Report to the Secretary of State and
the Secretary of Defens e(\\QXQdAiQX ''Brownell Committee
ReporC), June 13, 1952, p. 15, NSA FOIA; George F.
Howe, “The Early History of NSA,” Cryptologic
Spectrum, vol. 4, no. 2, (Spring 1974): p. 13, DOCID:
3217154, NSA FOIA; Thomas L. Burns, The Origins oj
the National Security Agency: 1940-1 95 2(¥oYt Meade,
MD: Center for Cryptologic History, 1990), pp. 36-37,
52, NSA FOIA.

17. SRMA-011, SSS/SSA/ASA Staff Meeting Minutes, p.

257, RG-457, NA, CP; letter, Wenger to Jones, June 4,
1946, RG-38, CNSG Library, box 101, file Miscellaneous
June 1945-June 1946, NA, CP.

18. ASA, Summary Annual Report of the Army Security
Agency: Fiscal Year 1947, February 1950, p. 23,
INSCOM FOIA; ASA, Annual Historical Report, ASA
Plans and Operations Section, FY 1950, p. ii, INSCOM
FOIA; SRMA-OII, SSS/SSA/ASA Staff Meeting Minutes:
25 November 1942- 17 February 1948, p. 251, RG-457,
NA, CP; Howe, “The Early History of NSA,” p. 13,
DOCID:

19. Dr. Thomas R. Johnson, American Cryptology During
the Cold War, 1945-1989, bk. 1, The Struggle for
Centralization, 1945-1 9 60{¥oYt Meade, MD: Center for
Cryptologic History, 1995), p. 17, NSA FOIA.

20. Details of Gouzenko’s revelations can be found in
Memorandum, Hoover to Lyon, Soviet Espionage
Activity, September 18, 1945, RG-59, Decimal File 1945-
1949, box 6648, file 861.20242/9-1845, NA, CP;
memorandum. Hoover to Lyon, Soviet Espionage
Activity, September 24, 1945, RG-59, Decimal File 1945-
1949, box 6648, file 861.20242/9-2445, NA, CP; The
Report of the Royal Commission to Investigate the Facts
Relating to and the Circumstances Surrounding the
Communication by Public Officials and Other Persons in
Positions of Trust of Secret and Confidential Information

to Agents of a Foreign Power(Kellock-Taschereau
Commission) (Ottawa: Canadian Government Printing
Office, 1946).

21. Wenger had held discussions with Captain E. S.
Brand, RCN, the director of naval intelligence; Captain
George A. “Sam” Worth, RCN, the director of naval
communications; and Commander Macdonald concerning
future U.S. -Canadian COMINT relations. Letter, Wenger
to deMarbois, October 4, 1945, RG-38, CNSG Library,
box 101, file Miscellaneous June 1945-June 1946, NA,
CP.

22. SD-38092, Briefing for General Irwin — of Important
Happenings in the Intelligence Division for the Period 28
April Through 14 June, 1949, June 15, 1949, p. 2, RG-
319, entry 47A Army G-2 Top Secret Decimal File 1942-
1952, box 9, file 014.331 thru 018.2 ’49, NA, CP; letter,
Cabell to Crean, June 29, 1949. The author is grateful to
Bill Robinson in Canada for making a copy of this
declassified document available to him. See also letter,
Wenger to Jones, November 17, 1949, RG-38, CNSG
Library, box 101, file Miscellaneous January 1949-
December 1949, NA, CP; letter, Glazebrook to
Armstrong, November 18, 1949, RG-59, entry 1561 Lot
58D776 INR Subject File 1945-1956, box 22, file
Exchange of Classified Information with Foreign
Governments Other than UK, NA, CP; Johnson,

American Cryptology, bk. 1, p. 18. For the signing of
C ANUS A in 1949, see lAC 376, Communications
Security Establishment, Canadian SIGINT Security
Instructions, November 2, 1976, p. 2, Canadian

Department of National Defense FOIA.

23. Memorandum, McDonald to Secretary of the Air
Force et al.. Conversations with British Representatives
Concerning British Collaboration with Australia and New
Zealand on Communications Intelligence Activities,
January 2, 1948, RG-341, entry 335 Air Force Plans
Project Decimal File 1942-1954, box 741 -A, file 350.05
England (2 Jan 48), NA, CP; memorandum, Shedden to
Secretary, Defence Committee, Tripartite Conference at
Defence Signals Branch, September 3, 1953, Series
A5954, box 2355, Item 2355/7 Visit of US and UK
Representatives to DSB Nov 1952 Tripartite Conference
Sept 1953, National Archives of Australia, Canberra,
Australia; Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 1, pp. 18-
19.

24. 1 ohnson, American Cryptology, bk. 1, p. 160.

25. Peter J. Freeman, How GCHQ Came to
Cheltenham{C\\Q[tQvAvdim, U.K.: GCHQ, 2002), p. 9;
confidential interview with former GCHQ officer.

26. British Communications Intelligence, undated circa
early 1946, RG-457, HCC, box 808, file British

COMINT, NA, CP. For the size of the London Signals
Intelligence Center Russian Section, see Director's Order
No. 77, September 20, 1945, HW 64/68, PRO, Kew,
England; Number of Staff Employed, September 30, 1945,
HW 14/151, PRO, Kew, England.

27. F. W. Winterbotham, The Ultra Secret(London’.
Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974), p. 13.

28. For Alexander, see Michael Smith, The Spying Game:
The Secret History of British Espionage{hondom
Politico’s, 2003), p. 296. For Morgan, see British
Communications Intelligence, undated circa early 1946,
appendix 1, p. 6, RG-457, HCC, box 808, file British
COMINT, NA, CP.

29. War Diary Summary of G4A for February 1946,
March 5, 1946, p. 1, RG-38, CNSG Library, box 111, file
5750/160 Section War Diaries (3 of 3), NA, CP; War
Diary Summary of G4A for March 1946, April 9, 1946, p.
1, RG-38, CNSG Library, box 111, file 5750/160 Section
War Diaries (3 of 3), NA, CP; War Diary Summary oj
G4A for April 1946, May 6, 1946, p. 1, RG-38, CNSG
Library, box 111, file 5750/160 Section War Diaries (3 of
3), NA, CP.

30. Decrypts V-2936, Petropavlovsk to Toyohara, August
10, 1946, RG-38, Translations of Intercepted Enemy
Radio Traffic 1940-1946, box 2744, NA, CP; comment to

WS BO 17098, Sovetskaya Gavan’ Naval Base to
Petropavlovsk Naval Base, RUN-17440(N), RUNRA-l,
November 15, 1948, RG-38, Translations of Intercepted
Enemy Radio Traffic 1940-1946, box 2742, NA, CP.
Both reclassified by U.S. Navy.

31. War Diary Summary of G4A for April 1946, May 6,
1946, p. 1, RG-38, CNSG Library, box 111, file 5750/160
Section War Diaries (3 of 3), NA, CP; David Alvarez,
“Behind Venona: American Signals Intelligence in the
Early Cold War,” Intelligence and National Security,
Summer 1999: p.l81.

32. Hugh Denham, “Conel Hugh O’Donel Alexander,”
Cryptologic Spectrum, vol. 4, no. 3 (Summer 1974): p.
31, DOCID: 3217160, NSA FOIA; Smith, The Spying
Game, p. 296.

33. Confidential interview. For Raven background, see
NSA Newsletter, May 1954, p. 5, NSA FOIA.

34. For RUMRA decrypts, see RUM- 12405, Vienna HQ
Central Group of Forces to Moscow Ministry of the
Armed Forces, RUMRA- 1, intercepted November 15,
1946, solved January 13, 1949; RUM- 124 10, Moscow to
Tbilisi, RUMRA- 1, intercepted March 15, 1947, solved
January 18, 1949; RUM- 125 19, Moscow to Kuibyshev:
Volga VO, RUMRA- 1, intercepted March 21, 1947,
solved February 25, 1949; RUM- 12000, Moscow to

Arkhangel’sk VO, RUMRA-1, intercepted June 24, 1948,
solved October 13, 1948; RUM- 12293, Tbilisi to
Moscow: MVS, RUMRA-1, intercepted October 14,
1947, solved December 6, 1948, all in RG-38, box 2742,
NA, CP.

35. War Diary Summary of G4A for February 1946,
March 5, 1946, p. 1, RG-38, CNSG Library, box 111, file
5750/160 War Diary Sections (3 of 3), NA, CP; Summary
of War Diary for N-51: July 1946, August 6, 1946, p. 2,
RG-38, CNSG Library, box 111, file 5750/160 Section
War Diaries (1 of 3), NA, CP; letter, Wenger to Travis,
February 15, 1947, RG-38, CNSG Library, box 101, file
Miscellaneous November 1951-July 1953, NA, CP.

36. Letter, Currier to Wenger, April 8, 1947, RG-38,
Crane CNSG Library, box 101, file Miscellaneous
November 1951-July 1953, NA, CP.

37. ASA, Summary Annual Report of the Army Security
Agency: Fiscal Year 1947, February 1950, p. 45,
INSCOM FOIA.

38. See, for example, RUM- 12405, Vienna HQ Central
Group of Forces to Moscow Ministry of the Armed
Forces, RUMRA-1, intercepted November 15, 1946,
solved January 13, 1949; RUM- 124 10, Moscow to
Tbilisi, RUMRA-1, intercepted March 15, 1947, solved
January 18, 1949; RUM- 125 19, Moscow to Kuibyshev:

Volga VO, RUMRA-1, intercepted March 21, 1947,
solved February 25, 1949; RUM- 12550, Khabarovsk to
Irkutsk, RUMY, intercepted January 15, 1949, solved
March 10, 1949, all in RG-38, Translations of Intercepted
Enemy Radio Traffic, 1940- 1946, box 2739, NA, CP;
RUM- 11835, Alma Ata: MGB to Directorate of Military
Supply, MGB, RUMY, intercepted November 13, 1947,
solved September 27, 1948; RUM-11861, Moscow to
ArkhangeTsk VO, RUMB, intercepted July 30, 1947,
solved September 29, 1948; RUM-11989, Tbilisi to
Moscow, intercepted August 6, 1948, solved October 18,
1948; RUM-11992, Tbilisi to Pojly, RUMY, intercepted
August 27, 1948, solved October 13, 1948; RUM-12000,
Moscow to ArkhangeTsk VO, RUMRA-1, intercepted
June 24, 1948, solved October 13, 1948; RUM-12003,
Moscow to Alma Ata, intercepted August 23, 1948,
solved October 18, 1948; RUM- 12087, Moscow to
Vorkuta, RUYLA-1, intercepted April 8, 1948, solved
October 25, 1948; RUM- 122 15, Baku to Moscow,
RUMY, intercepted September 7, 1948, solved November
18, 1948; RUM-12312, DaTnij to Moscow: MVS,
RUMUC-2, intercepted March 18, 1948, solved

December 7, 1948; RUM- 12293, Tbilisi to Moscow:
MVS, RUMRA-1, intercepted October 14, 1947, solved
December 6, 1948; RUM- 12320, Khar’kov to

Kavkazkaya Station, intercepted October 8, 1948, solved
December 15, 1948; RUM- 12327, Grozny to Moscow,
RUMY, intercepted December 3, 1948, solved December

17, 1948; RUM-12334, Chita to Moscow, RUMY,
intercepted September 9, 1948, solved December 20,
1948; RUM-12356, Port Arthur: 39 Army to UKH of
MGB, December 31, 1948; RUM- 12509, Vladivostok to
Moscow, RUMY, intercepted October 14, 1948, solved
UNK; RUMI-0622, Riga to Moscow, RUMUA-IA,
intercepted December 28, 1946, solved October 12, 1948;
RUMI-0625, Tbilisi to Moscow MVS, RUMUA-1,
intercepted January 8, 1948, solved October 12, 1948;
RUMI-0705, Vienna to Mukachevo, RUMUA-1 A,
intercepted December 3, 1947, solved December 23,
1948; RUMI-0712, Vienna to Mukachevo, RUMUA-IA,
intercepted December 3, 1947, solved December 23,
1948, all in RG-38, Translations of Intercepted Enemy
Radio Traffic, 1940-1946, box 2742, NA, CP; V-2936,
Petropavlovsk to Toyohara, August 10, 1946, RG-38,
Translations of Intercepted Enemy Radio Traffic, 1940-
1946, box 2744, NA, CP; RUM- 10994, Port Arthur 39
Army to Voroshilov PRIMVO, intercepted March 22,
1948, solved August 19, 1948; RUM-11100, Port Arthur:
39 Army to Voroshilov PRIMVO, intercepted February
20, 1948, solved August 18, 1948; RUM-11107,
Voroshilov PRIMVO to Port Arthur 39 Army, intercepted
July 7, 1947, solved August 17, 1948; RUM-11059,
Yerevan 7 Guards Army to Moscow, intercepted January
9, 1947, solved August 18, 1948, all in RG-38,
Translations of Intercepted Enemy Radio Traffic, 1940-
1946, box 2745, NA, CP. All of these documents have

been reclassified by the U.S. Navy.

39. For examples of Soviet navy cipher solutions, see NI-
1-# 14928, CinC 5th Fleet to Moscow Naval
Headquarters, RUNRA-1, intercepted April 18, 1948,
solved March 16, 1949; NI-1-#23815, Vladivostok to
Moscow, RUNY, intercepted December 8, 1948, solved
April 21, 1949; RUN- 16971, Petropavlovsk Naval Base
to Sovetskaya Gavan Naval Base, RUNRA-1, intercepted
January 16, 1948, solved November 18, 1948, all in RG-
38, Translations of Intercepted Enemy Radio Traffic,
1940-1946, box 2739, NA, CP; NI-1 Summary part 2,
December 14, 1946; NI-1 Summary, December 26, 1946;
NI-1 Summary, March 21, 1947, all in RG-38,

Translations of Intercepted Enemy Radio Traffic, 1940-
1946, box 2740, NA, CP; RUN- 1799, Chief of Staff,
Naval Air Forces, Moscow to Chief of Staff, Naval Air
Force, Black Sea Fleet, intercepted May 13, 1948, solved
December 6, 1948; RUN- 16132, Petropavlovsk Naval
Base to Sovetskaya Gavan Naval Base, intercepted June
30, 1948, solved November 19, 1948; RUN- 18002,
Sovetskaya Gavan CinC 7th Fleet to Moscow Naval Hqs,
intercepted June 10, 1948, solved December 2, 1948;
RUN- 180 13, Vladivostok CinC 5th Fleet to Moscow
Naval Hqs, intercepted February 13, 1948, solved
December 3, 1948; RUN- 19962, Vladivostok CinC 5th
Fleet to Moscow Naval Hqs, intercepted April 19, 1948,
solved December 29, 1948, all in RG-38, Translations of

Intercepted Enemy Radio Traffic, 1940-1946, box 2742,
NA, CP; RUN-21146, Vladivostok CinC 5th Fleet to
Moscow Naval Hqs, intercepted February 4, 1948, solved
February 10, 1949, RG-38, Translations of Intercepted
Enemy Radio Traffic, 1940-1946, box 2743, NA, CP;
RUN- 15567, Moscow Naval Headquarters to Sovetskaya
Gavan CinC 7th Fleet, intercepted January 30, 1948,
solved August 17, 1948; RUN-15702, Moscow Naval
Headquarters to CinC 5th Fleet, intercepted August 24,
1948, solved August 31, 1948; RUN-15724, Moscow
Naval Headquarters to CinC 5th Fleet, intercepted August
24, 1948, solved September 28, 1948; RUN-15796,
Moscow Naval Headquarters to CinC 5th Fleet,

intercepted August 25, 1948, solved September 22, 1948,
all in RG-38, Translations of Intercepted Enemy Radio
Traffic, 1940-1946, box 2744, NA, CP; RUN-15724,
Moscow Naval Headquarters to CinC 5th Fleet,

intercepted August 24, 1948, solved September 28, 1948;
RUN-ARU/T2343, Headquarters Air Force Black Sea to
Headquarters Naval Air Force, Moscow, intercepted
October 13, 1947, solved September 20, 1948, both in
RG-38, Translations of Intercepted Enemy Radio Traffic,
1940-1946, box 2745, NA, CP. All of these documents
have been reclassified by the U.S. Navy.

40. RUM- 10828, Vozdvizhenka 9th Air Army to Moscow
VVS VS, intercepted May 4, 1947, solved August 6,
1948, RG-38, Translations of Intercepted Enemy Radio

Traffic, 1940-1946, box 2744, NA, CP; RUM-12083,
Moscow: VVS VS to Vienna: 2nd Air Army, RUARA-1,
intercepted October 6, 1947, solved October 20, 1948;
RUM- 123 75, Dairen 7 Air Corps to Vozdvizhenka 9th
Air Army, RUMUC-2, intercepted December 1, 1947,
solved UNK, both in RG-38, Translations of Intercepted
Enemy Radio Traffic, 1940-1946, box 2742, NA, CP;
RUMI-0505, Tbilisi 1 1 Air Army to VVS VS, intercepted
April 30, 1948, solved August 31, 1948, RG-38,
Translations of Intercepted Enemy Radio Traffic, 1940-
1946, box 2745, NA, CP. All of these documents have
been reclassified by the U.S. Navy.

41. RUAMT-3 was the designation given to the cipher
system used by the 9th Air Army at Vozdvizhenka that
was being read by the U.S. Army, which usually consisted
of messages from air base duty officers reporting on the
arrival and departure of aircraft at their base. John
Milmore, #7 Code Break 5oy(Haverford, PA: Infinity
Publishing, 2002), pp. 12-13.

42. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 1, p. 161; Robert
Louis Benson and Michael Warner, Venona: Soviet
Espionage and the American Response, 1939-
7 95 /(Washington, DC: Center for the Study of
Intelligence, 1996), pp. xxi, 93-104; Desmond Ball and
David Homer, Breaking the Codes: Australia's KGB
Ve/worA:(Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1998), p. 203.????

43. David A. Hatch and Robert Louis Benson, The
Korean War: The SIGINT Background(¥ ort Meade, MD:
Center for Cryptologic History, 2000), p. 4.

44. Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev, The
Haunted Wood(HQSM York: Random House, 1999), pp.
291-92.

45. Confidential interviews. For the intelligence
background to the 1948 Berlin Crisis, see message, SX
2967, HQ EUCOM to CSUSA Washington, DC, April 8,
1948, RG-319, entry 58 Army G-2 Top Secret Messages
1942-1952, box 115, file 1. FR “S” Germany 1-1-48-6-9-
48, NA, CP; CIA, information report. The Current
Situation in Berlin and Related Information, April 30,
1948, CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-RDP83-
004 15R0008000900 15-7, NA, CP.

46. Confidential interviews.

47. See, for example, SD-11388, Intelligence Division,
U.S. Europe an Command, Air Evaluation Report J-32,
Evaluation of Radio Intercept Reports from Signal
Section, August 17, 1948, RG-319, entry 1041, box 239,
file ID No. 960884, NA, CP; SC-8483, U.S. Air Force in
Europe, Deputy Chief of Staff, Intelligence, Estimate oj
the Situation, December 1, 1948, p. 12, RG-313, entry
1335 (UD) CINCNELM Top Secret Intelligence Files
1946-1950, box 14, file #29, NA, CP. For the overall

importance of the Gehlen Org’s SIGINT product, see
Kevin C. Ruffner, ed., Forging an Intelligence
Partnership: CIA and the Origins of the END, 1945-49:
A Documentary Washington, DC: CIA History

Staff, 1999), vol. II, pp. 105-06, RG-263, CIA Subject
Files, box 2, NA, CP; James H. Critchfield, “The Early
History of the Gehlen Organization and Its Influence on
the Development of a National Security System in the
Federal Republic of Germany,” in Heike Bungert, Jan G.
Heitmann, and Michael Wala, eds.. Secret Intelligence in
the Twentieth Century (London: Frank Cass and Co.,
2003), p. 160.

48. TI Item #137, NT-1 Traffic Intelligence,
Unprecedented Coordinated Russian Communications
Changes, November 4, 1948, RG-38, Translations of
Intercepted Enemy Radio Traffic, 1940- 1946, box 2742,
NA, CP (reclassified by the U.S. Navy); National
Cryptologic School, On Watch, pp. 19-20; Hatch and
Benson, The Korean War, p. 4; Jeannette Williams and
Yolande Dickerson, The Invisible Cryptologists: African-
Americans, WWII to 7P5d(Fort Meade, MD: Center for
Cryptologic History, 2001), p. 19.

49. National Cryptologic School, On Watch, p. 19. See
also Hatch and Benson, The Korean War, p. 5; Donald P.
Steury, “The End of the Dark Era: The Transformation of
American Intelligence, 1956,” p. 2, paper presented at a

conference organized by the Allied Museum, Berlin,
April 24, 2006.

50. S/ARU/C735, Developments in Soviet Cypher [sic]
and Signals Security, 1946-1948, December 1948, RG-
38, Translations of Intercepted Enemy Radio Traffic,
1940-1946, box 2739, NA, CP (reclassified by the U.S.
Navy); Department of the Army, Pamphlet No. 30-2, The
Soviet Army, July 1949, p. 41, RG-6, box 107, MacArthur
Memorial Library, Norfolk, VA; SRH-277, “A Lecture on
Communications Intelligence by Rear Admiral E.E.
Stone, DIRAFSA,” June 5, 1951, p. 34, RG-457, entry
9002 Special Research Histories, NA, CP; Brownell
Committee Report, June 13, 1952, pp. 29, 83, NSA FOIA;
CIA, CS Historical Paper No. 150, Clandestine Service
History: The Berlin Tunnel Operation: 1952-1956,
August 25, 1967, p. 1, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading
Room, Document No. 0001407685,

http://www.foia.cia.gov : Defense Intelligence Agency,
DDB-1 170-3-80, Warsaw Pact Forces Command,
Control, and Communications, August 1980, pp. 1-2,
DIA FOIA; National Cryptologic School, On Watch, p.
19; David E. Murphy, Sergei A. Kondrashev, and George
Bailey, Battleground 5er/m(New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1997), p. 208; interview, Frank B.
Rowlett.

51. Study of Joint Organizations for the Production o]

Communications Intelligence and for Security of U.S.
Military Communications (Stone Board Report),
December 27, 1948, part A: Communications

Intelligence, p. 5, DOCID: 3187441, NSA FOIA;
Brownell Committee Report, June 13, 1952, p. 108, NSA
FOIA.

52. HQ USAF, AFOIR-SR 322, Functions of the USAF
Security Ser vice, October 20, 1948, p. 1, AIA FOIA; “35
Years of Excellence,” Spokesman, October 1983: p. 9,
AIA FOIA.

53. USAFSS, Organizational Development of the
USAFSS, 1948-1962, February 15, 1963, p. 122, AIA
FOIA; memorandum, Cabell to Director of Operations et
al.. Changes in Personnel and Equipment Priorities for
U.S. Air Force Security Service, December 14, 1949, RG-
341, entry 214 Top Secret Cable and Controls Division,
box 47, file 2-10500-2-10599, NA, CP.

54. Memorandum, Secretary of Defense to Secretaries of
the Army, Navy, and Air Force, Organization oj
Cryptologic Activities Within the National Military
Establishment, May 20, 1945, with attachment, RG-330,
entry 199 OSD Decimal File 1947-1950, box 97, CD 22-
1-23, NA, CP; JCS 2010, Organization of Cryptologic
Activities Within the National Military Establishment,
May 20, 1949, p. 1, RG-341, entry 214, file 2-8100-2-
8199, NA, CP.

55. AFSA’s fiscal year 1951 budget (all of which came
from financial contributions made by the three military
services) came to about $23 million, $13.9 million of
which was “donated” to AFSA from ASA’s fiscal year
1951 command budget. See Tentative Plans for FY 1952
Budget of Armed Forces Security Agency — Part 1
Operating Plans . . . Part II Budget Summary, April 6,
1950, RG-319, entry 1 (UD) Index to Army Chief of Staff
Top Secret Decimal File 1950, box 5, file 040 Armed
Forces Security Agency, NA, CP; memorandum. Pace to
Director, Armed Forces Security Agency, Fiscal Year
1951 Financing for AFSA, June 14, 1950, RG-319, entry
2 (UD) Army Chief of Staff Decimal File 1950, box 552,
file 040 AFSA, NA, CP.

56. JCS 2010/10, Report by the Armed Forces
Communication Intelligence Advisory Council to the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, Organization of the Armed Forces
Security Agency, September 30, 1949, Enclosure B, p. 47,
RG-218, CCS 334 (NSA), sec. 2, NARA FOIA.

57. TS Cont. No. SD-39819, memorandum. Stone to
Director of Intelligence, U.S. Army, Command
Responsibility for ASA Fixed Intercept Installations,
March 3, 1950; memorandum for the record, AFSA
Conference with ASA Concerning Policy Questions,
March 1, 1950, both in RG-319, entry 47A G-2 Top
Secret Decimal File 1942-1952, box 13, file 676.3 thru

800.2 ’50, NARA FOIA.

58. NSA OH- 198 1-01, oral history. Interview with
Herbert L. Conley, March 5, 1984, p. 59, partially
declassified and on file at the library of the National
Cryptologic Museum, Fort Meade, MD.

59. NSA OH- 11-82, oral history. Interview with Captain
Wesley A. Wright, USN, May 24, 1982, p. 75, NSA FOIA.

60. 1 o\ms,on, American Cryptology, bk. 1, p. 184.

61. Williams and Dickerson, The Invisible Crypto legists,

p. 19.

62. As of 1950, the other members of Jack Curin’ s
plaintext unit were Olin Adams, Susan Armstrong, James
Hones, James Honea, First Lieutenant Justin McCarty,
Juliana Mickwitz, Nicholas Murphy, and Constantin
Oustinoff. ASA, ASA Summary Annual Report FY 1948,
p. 33n, IN-SCOM FOIA; Johnson, American Cryptology,
bk. 1, p. 169. Gurin background from NSA Newsletter,
October 1965, p. 13, NSA FOIA; Williams and
Dickerson, The Invisible Cry ptolo gists, p. 17.

63. Study of Joint Organizations for the Production of

Communications Intelligence and for Security of U.S.
Military Communications (Stone Board Report),
December 27, 1948, part A: Communications

Intelligence, p. 16, DOCID: 3187441, NSA FOIA.

64. Memorandum, USCIB to Secretary of Defense,
Atomic Energy Program of the USSR, May 12, 1949;
memorandum for the Secretary of Defense from Admiral
Louis Denfield, USN, Atomic Energy Program of the
USSR, June 30, 1949; memorandum for the Secretary of
Defense, Atomic Energy Program of the USSR, June 23,

1949, all in RG-330, entry 199 OSD Decimal File 1947-

1950, box 61, file CD 11-1-2, NA, CP. For the precipitous
decline of AFSA Far Eastern, Chinese, and North Korean
missions, see Guy R. Vanderpool, “COMINT and the
PRC Intervention in the Korean War,” Cryptologic
Quarterly, vol. 15, no. 2 (Summer 1996): p. 8, NSA
FOIA.

65. Brownell Committee Report, June 13, 1952, pp. 83-
84, NSA FOIA.

66. In lieu of decrypts, the best that the American and
British intelligence analysts could do was try to map the
Soviet diplomatic radio nets in Europe, the Middle East,
and Asia and monitor the flow of communications traffic
along them. See, for example, ASA, ID, RU-TAF-GEN-I
#24, Opening of Soviet Legation in Tel Aviv, August 13,
1948, RG-38, Translations of Intercepted Enemy Radio
Traffic, 1940-1946, box 2744, NA, CP; ASA, ID, RU-
TAF-GEN-1 #28, Soviet Operated Diplomatic Radio
Links, December 2, 1948, RG-38, Translations of
Intercepted Enemy Radio Traffic, 1940-1946, box 2742,

NA, CP; S/ARU/C728, Soviet Diplomatic W/T Network,
December 9, 1948, RG-38, Translations of Intercepted
Enemy Radio Traffic, 1940-1946, box 2739, NA, CP;
S/AQP/C61, Cipher Traffic Between Moscow and Soviet
Embassy, New Delhi, January 3, 1949, RG-38,

Translations of Intercepted Enemy Radio Traffic, 1940-
1946, box 2742, NA, CP; ASA, ID, RU-TAF-GEN-P #1,
Traffic Analysis Fusion General Periodic #7, January 12,
1949, RG-38, Translations of Intercepted Enemy Radio
Traffic, 1940-1946, box 2742, NA, CP; S/ARU/C880,
Soviet Diplomatic Wireless Link: Moscow-Oslo, March
14, 1949, RG-38, Translations of Intercepted Enemy
Radio Traffic, 1940-1946, box 2739, NA, CP. All
reclassified by the U.S. Navy.

67. T/S/002/103, Periodic Note — the RUR Networks,
February 12, 1949, RG-38, Translations of Intercepted
Enemy Radio Traffic, 1940-1946, box 2739, NA, CP.
Reclassified by the U.S. Navy.

68. Benson and Warner, Venona, pp. xxiv-xxvi.

69. Of the 206 Russian spies identified by the FBI, 101
had left the United States by 1955 and could not be
prosecuted, including 61 Russian officials; 11 had died;
14 were cooperating with the FBI; and 15 were
prosecuted. These individuals were Abraham Brothman,
Judith Coplon, Klaus Fuchs, Harry Gold, David
Greenglass, Valentine A. Gubitchev (Judith Coplon’s

KGB handler), Miriam Moskowitz, Julius Rosenberg,
Ethel Rosenberg, Alfred Slack, Morton Sobell, Jack
Soble, Myra Soble, William Perl, and Alger Hiss. This
left 77 individuals whom the FBI had investigated but the
U.S. Justice Department could not or would not
prosecute. Memorandum, Belmont to Boardman,
November 27, 1957, pp. 2-3, FBI Venona Files, FBI
FOIA Reading Room, Washington, DC.

70. Currie moved to Colombia in 1950 to help that nation
liberalize its economy. He remained there for the rest of
his life, dying in Bogota on December 23, 1993, at the age
of ninety-one. Memorandum, Belmont to Boardman,
February 1, 1956, p. 9, FBI Venona Files, FBI FOIA
Reading Room, Washington, DC.

71. Weisband FBI File, Documents No. 65-59095-15, 65-
59095-606, and 65-59095-628, FBI FOIA; Howard
Benedict, “Book Says U.S. Broke Soviet Code,
Implicating Rosenbergs,” Associated Press, March 3,
1980.

72. Brownell Committee Report, pp. 113-14, NSA FOIA;
Dr. Thomas R. Johnson, “American Cryptology During
the Korean War — A Preliminary Verdict,” June 2000, p.
3, paper presented at the 26th Annual Conference of the
Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations,
June 23, 2000, Toronto, Canada.

73. Woodrow J. Kuhns, ed., Assessing the Soviet Threat:

The Early Cold War Washington, DC: Center for

the Study of Intelligence, 1997), p. 11, n. 39.

74. Memorandum, Hillenkoetter to Executive Secretary,
NSC, Atomic Energy Program of the USSR, April 20,
1949, p. 46, enclosure to memorandum, Allen to
Secretary of the Army et al.. Atomic Energy Program oj
the USSR, April 28, 1949, RG-319, 1949-1950 TS, Hot
File 091.412, box 165, file 091 Soviet Union, NA, CP;
memorandum, Bauman to Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2,
Military Personnel Requirements of AES A, June 6, 1950,
RG-319, entry 47E Army G-2 Decimal File 1949-1950;
memorandum. Brown to Wenger, Military Personnel
Requirements of the Armed Forces Security Agency, June
7, 1950, RG-319, entry 47E Army G-2 Decimal File
1949-1950, both in box 87, file 320.2 1949-1950 (2 Aug
46), NA, CP; memorandum. Chief, Staff C and D to
Assistant Director, Special Operations, Steps Necessary to
Place CIA, Particularly OSO, in a Position to Adequately
Fulfill Basic Responsibilities During the Present and
Inevitable Future Emergencies, July 10, 1950, p. 3,
CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-RDP84-
00499R000700090019-1, NA, CP.

75. Johnson, “A Preliminary Verdict,” p. 3.

76. David Halberstam, The Coldest m/r(New York:
Random House, 2007), p.l.

2: The Storm Breaks

L This chapter supplements with newly declassified
documents the author’s previously published detailed
examination of the role played by SIGINT in the Korean
War, for which see Matthew M. Aid, “U.S. Humint and
Comint in the Korean War: From the Approach of War to
the Chinese Intervention,” Intelligence and National
Security, vol. 14, no. 4 (Winter 1999): pp. 17-23;
Matthew M. Aid, “American Comint in the Korean War
(Part II): From the Chinese Intervention to the Armistice,”
Intelligence and National Security, vol. 15, no. 1 (Spring
2000): pp. 14-49.

Z ASA, History, Army Security Agency and Subordinate
Units, Fiscal Year 1951, vol. 2, p. 2, INSCOM FOIA;
Report to the Secretary of State and the Secretary oj
Defense, June 13, 1952, p. 29, NSA FOIA; Russell “Hop”
Harriger, A Historical Study of the Air Force Security
Service and Korea: June 1950-October 1952, October 2,
1952, p. 4, AIA FOIA; James E. Pierson, A Special
Historical Study: USAFSS Response to World Crises,
1 949-1 969{Sdin Antonio, TX: USAFSS Historical Office,
1970), p. 1, AIA FOIA; Richard A. “Dick” Chun, A Bit on
the Korean COMINT Effort, working notes prepared for
the NSA History Office, 1971, DOCID 321697, NSA
FOIA; Thomas L. Bums, The Origins of the National
Security Agency: 1 940-1 952(FoYt Meade, MD: Center for

Cryptologic History, 1990), p. 84, NS A FOIA; Dr.
Thomas R. Johnson, American Cryptology During the
Cold War, 1945-1989, bk. 1, The Struggle for
Centralization, 1 945-1 960{¥ort Meade, MD: Center for
Cryptologic History, 1995), p. 39, NSA FOIA; Benson K.
Buffham, “The Korean War and AFSA,” The Phoenician,
Spring 2001: p. 7; report. On the 20th Anniversary of the
Korean War: An Informal Memoire by the ORE Korean
Desk Officer, Circa 1948-1950, undated, p. 22, RG-263,
entry 17, box 4, file CIA Reporting on ChiComs in
Korean War, NA, CP; letter, Morton A. Rubin to author.
May 5, 1992. The “North Korean target was ignored”
quote is from Jill Frahm, So Power Can Be Brought into
Play: SIGINT and the Pusan Perimeter(¥ ort Meade, MD:
Center for Cryptologic History, 2000), p. 4.

T Memorandum, USCIB to Secretary of Defense, May
12, 1949; memorandum, Denfield to Secretary of
Defense, Atomic Energy Program of the USSR, June 30,
1949, both in RG-330, entry 199 Central Decimal File
1947-1950, box 61, file CD 11-1-2, NA, CP; Russell
“Hop” Harriger, A Historical Study of the Air Force
Security Service and Korea: June 1950-October 1952,
October 2, 1952, p. 2, AIA FOIA; historical paper. The
US. COMINT Effort During the Korean War: June 1950-
August 1953, January 6, 1954, pp. 2-3, DOCID 3216598,
NSA FOIA; interviews, Frank B. Rowlett and Louis W.
Tordella. Quote from Frahm, Power Can Be Brought, p.

4. Rubin quote from interview with Morton A. Rubin.

4, Historical paper, The U.S. COMINT Effort During the
Korean War: June 1950-August 1953, January 6, 1954, p.
2, DOCID 3216598, NSA FOIA; Richard A. “Dick”
Chun, A Bit on the Korean COMINT Effort, working
notes prepared for the NSA History Office, 1971, p. 1,
DOCID 321697, NSA FOIA; Bums, Origins, p. 85;
Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. I, p. 39; David A.
Hatch and Robert Louis Benson, The Korean War: The
SIGINT Background(¥ ort Meade, MD: Center for
Cryptologic History, 2000), p. 5; Frahm, Power Can Be
Brought, p. 4.

5^ ASA, Pacific, ASAP AC Summary Annual Report, FY
1951, p. 63, INSCOM FOIA; Hatch and Benson, The
Korean War, p. 8; interviews with Morton Rubin and
Clayton Swears.

C Dr. Thomas R. Johnson, “Signals Intelligence in the
Korean War,” paper presented at the 26th Annual
Conference of the Society for Historians of American
Foreign Relations, June 23, 2000, Toronto, Canada;
Frahm, Power Can Be Brought, pp. 6-7; John Milmore,
#7 Code Break 5qy(Haverford, PA: Infinity Publishing,
2002), pp. 33,40-41,47.

T Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 1, pp. 43, 55;
Frahm, Power Can Be Brought, p. 7; NSA OH-1999-51,

oral history, Interview with Benson K. Buffliam, June 15,
1999, p. 33,NSA FOIA.

L Johnson, “Signals Intelligence”; Hatch and Benson,
The Korean War, p. 9. See also Clay Blair, The Forgotten
War: America in Korea, 1950-1953 (Hqsm York: Times
Books, 1987), p. 171. Polk quote from April 25, 1991,
letter to author from General James H. Polk. Woolnough
quote from Senior Officers Debriefing Program, Oral
History of General James K Woolnough, vol. 1, p. 31,
U.S. Army Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks,
PA.

9^ Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 1, p. 43; Dr.
Thomas R. Johnson, “American Cryptology During the
Korean War — A Preliminary Verdict,” June 2000, p. 5,
paper presented at the 26th Annual Conference of the
Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations,
June 23, 2000, Toronto, Canada; Frahm, Power Can Be
Brought, p. 12; “SIGINT in the Defense of the Pusan
Perimeter: Korea 1950,” manuscript, date unknown, NSA
FOIA; Blair, Forgotten War, p. 240.

10. Memorandum, GHQ FEC G-2, Operations Branch to
C/S ROK, JSO/KLO Report No. 17, 130030K Aug 1950,
RG-6, box 14, folder 6, Correspondence:
Memoranda/Messageforms, 23 July- August 30, 1950,
Mac Arthur Memorial Library, Norfolk, VA;
memorandum, GHQ FEC G-2, Operations Branch to C/S

ROK, JSO/KLO Report No. 19, August 15, 1950, RG-6,
box 14, folder 6, Correspondence:
Memoranda/Messageforms, 23 July- August 30, 1950,
MacArthur Memorial Library, Norfolk, VA; message, G
10011 KGI, CG, EUSAK REAR to CG EUSAK
FORWARD, August 19, 1950, RG-338 Records of the
Eighth U.S. Army, entry 116 ACofS, G-2 Outgoing Radio
Messages 1950-1951, box 50, file: Comeback Copies —
1950, NA, CP; DA TT 3708, Telecon, WASH and
CINCFE, August 30, 1950, p. 8, RG-59, Decimal File
1950-1954, box 4268, file: 795.00/8-3050, NA, CP.

11. Memorandum, GHQ EEC G-2, Operations Branch to
C/S ROK, JSO/KLO Report No. 17, 130030K Aug 1950,
RG-6, box 14, folder 6, Correspondence:
Memoranda/Messageforms, 23 July- August 30, 1950,
MacArthur Memorial Library, Norfolk, VA; SRC-3927,
CIA, Situation Summary, August 25, 1950, p. 1,
President’s Secretary’s Files, box 211, file: Situation
Summary, HSTL, Independence, MO.

12. HQ Eighth U.S. Army Korea, Appendix No. 1 to
Annex A (Intelligence) to Operations Plan 10, September
10, 1950, pp. 4-5; TS message, Dickey to Davidson,
undated but circa September 11, 1950, both in RG-338,
Rec ords of Eighth U.S. Army, entry 113, box 44, file
322.1 1950, NA, CP.

13. CIA, Situation Summary, August 18, 1950, p. 1,

President’s Secretary’s Files, box 211, file Situation
Summary, HSTL, Independence, MO; report, AFSA
[deleted]- 1230/50, WS-[PKC 321], North Korean,
September 14, 1950, NS A FOIA; report, AFSA

[deleted]- 1305/50, WS-[PKC 360], North Korean,
September 14, 1950, NS A FOIA; SRC-4232, CIA,
Situation Summary, September 15, 1950, p. 2, President’s
Secretary’s Files, box 211, file Situation Summary,
HSTL, Independence, MO; SRC-4397, CIA, Situation
Summary, September 22, 1950, p. 1, President’s

Secretary’s Files, box 211, file Situation Summary,
HSTL, Independence, MO; Frahm, Power Can Be
Brought,^. 13.

14. Milmore, #7 Code Break Boy, pp. 57-58.

15. ASA, History, Army Security Agency and Subordinate
Units, FY 1950, p. 28, INSCOM FOIA; ASA, History,
Army Security Agency and Supporting Units, FY 1951,
vol. 2, pp. 3, 18-22, INSCOM FOIA; Johnson, American
Cryptology, bk. 1, p. 44; Guy R. Vanderpool, “COMINT
and the PRC Intervention in the Korean War,”
Cryptologic Quarterly, vol. 15, no. 2 (Summer 1996): pp.
9-10, NSA FOIA; Hatch and Benson, The Korean War,
p. 9; Johnson, “Signals Intelligence in the Korean War.”

16. CIA, Situation Summary, October 27, 1950, p. 3,
President’s Secretary’s Files, box 211, HSTL,
Independence, MO; Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 1,

pp. 44^5; Vanderpool, “COMINT and the PRC
Intervention,” pp. II, 14; Hatch and Benson, The Korean
War, p. 9.

17. Department of the Army, Assistant Chief of Staff, G-
2, Intelligence, Periodic Intelligence Report on Soviet
Intentions and Activities, July 7, 1950, tab “A,” p. 1, RG-
319, entry 4 1950 Chief of Staff Top Secret Decimal
Files, box 3, 091 Russia Case #5, NA, CP; memorandum
for record, November 15, 1950, RG-341, entry 214 file 2-
17100-2-17199, NA, CP; Cynthia M. Grabo, “The Watch
Committee and the National Indications Center: The
Evolution of U.S. Strategic Warnings, 1950-1975,”
International Journal of Intelligence and
Counterintelligence, vol. 3, no. 3: p. 367.

18. Interviews with Morton A. Rubin and Louis Tordella.
Panikkar’s background from K. M. Panikkar, In Two
Chinas: Memoirs of a Diplomat(hondon: Allen and
Unwin, 1955) and K. M. Panikkar, An
Autobiography(MsidYSis: Oxford University Press, 1977).

19. Department of State, Office of Intelligence Research,
Current Soviet and Chinese Communist Intentions, No. 1,
August 8, 1950, p. 2, RG-59, entry 1561 Lot 58D776 INR
Subject Files 1945-1956, box 17, file: Current Soviet and
Chinese Intentions 8-8-50, NA, CP; CIA, Interim
Situation Summary, September 30, 1950, p. I, President’s
Secretary’s Files, box 211, file: Situation Summary,

HSTL, Independence, MO.

20. SRC-4635, CIA, Situation Summary, October 6, 1950,
p. 2, President’s Secretary’s files, box 21 1, file: Situation
Summary, HSTL, Independence, MO.

21. CIA, Interim Situation Summary, September 30, 1950,
p. I, President’s Secretary’s Files, box 211, file: Situation
Summary, HSTL, Independence, MO; Vanderpool,
“COMINT and the PRC Intervention,” p. 14; Hatch and
Benson, The Korean War, p. 9. See also message no. 792,
Moscow to Secretary of State, September 29, 1950, RG-
59, Decimal File 1950-1954, box 4298, file: 795A.5/9-
2950, NA, CP.

22. Memorandum, McConaughy to Jessup and Rusk,
Credibility of KM. Panikkar, Indian Ambassador to
Communist China, October 12, 1950, RG-59, entry 399A
Office of Chinese Affairs Top Secret Subject Files: 1945-
1950, box 18, file: 1950 TS Formosa: August-December,
NA, CP.

23. Thomas J. Christensen, “Threats, Assurances, and the
Last Chance for Peace,” International Security, vol. 17,
no. 1 (Summer 1992): pp. 151-52; Chen Jian, China’s
Road to the Korean /Tar(New York: Columbia University
Press, 1994), pp. 172-77.

24. For the Panikkar warning, see message no. 828, New
Delhi to Secretary of State, October 3, 1950, RG-59,

Decimal File 1950-1954, box 4268, file: 795.00/10-350,
NA, CP; British Embassy, Washington, DC, Message
Received from His Majesty’s Charge d’ Affaires, Peking,
dated 3rd October, 1950, RG-59, Decimal File 1950-
1954, box 4298, file: 795A.5/10-550, NA, CP;
memorandum, Clubb to Merchant, Chinese Communist
Threat of Intervention in Korea, October 4, 1950, RG-59,
entry 399A Office of Chinese Affairs Top Secret Subject
Files: 1945-1950, box 18, file: 1950 TS Korea: June-
October, NA, CP. See also memorandum, Bolling to
Chief of Staff, U.S. Intelligence Coverage of the
Relationship of Communist China to the Korean War
from 25 June to 24 November 1950, May 7, 1951, p. 12,
RG-319, entry 1041, ID No. 928809, NA, CP; Bruce W.
Bidwell, Col., USA (Ret.), History of the Military
Intelligence Division, Department of the Army General
Staff, 1962, part 7, Korean Conflict: 25 June 1950-27
July 1952, p. V-16, OCMH FOIA. For the Dutch warning,
see Department of State, Daily Staff Summary, October 3,
1950, p. 1, RG-59, entry 3049 Daily Staff Summary
1944-71, box 10, NA, CP; message no. 490, The Hague to
Secretary of State, October 3, 1950, Papers of Harry S.
Truman, Selected Rec ords Relating to the Korean War,
box 7, item no. 18, HSTL, Inde pen dence, MO;
memorandum, Clubb to Merchant, General Whitney’s
Latest Remarks Concerning Chinese Communist
Intentions to Intervene in North Korea, April 22, 1951, p.
2, RG-59, entry 1207 Rec ords of the Office of Chinese

Affairs — “P” Files, box 22, file 13p Korea TS, NA, CP.

25. For CIA dismissals of Panikkar warnings, see
“Indications of Chinese Intervention in Korea, October
1950-December 1950,” p. I, Exhibit O to CIA Historical
Staff, Study of CIA Reporting on Chinese Intervention in
the Korean War: September-December 1950, October
1955, CIA FOIA; CIA, Daily Summary #1409, October 3,
1950, p. I, CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP78-01 6 17A006 100020074-8, NA, CP; CIA, Weekly
Summary, October 6, 1953, pp. 6, 8, CIA Electronic
FOIA Reading Room, Document No. 0001 1 17967,
http://www.foia.cia.gov : CIA, Threat of Full Chinese
Communist Intervention in Korea, October 12, 1950, p. 4,
CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Document No.
0000I2I494, http://www.foia.cia.gov .

26. Chen Jian, The Sino-Soviet Alliance and China’s
Entry into the Korean IK7r( Washington, DC: Woodrow
Wilson International Center for Scholars, Cold War
International History Project, 1992), pp. 29-30.

27. John Patrick Finnegan, Military Intelligence: An
Overview, 7 555-7 95 /(Washington DC: Department of
the Army, 1998), p. 121, INSCOM FOIA; April 25, 1991,
letter to author from General James H. Polk.

28. Memorandum, Smith to President, October 20, 1950,
White House Office, National Security Council Staff:

Records 1946-61, Executive Secretary’s Subject File, box
10, file: Eyes Only (1), Dwight D. Eisenhower Library,
Abilene, KS; TS #43933, memorandum. Smith to Deputy
Secretary of Defense, Summary of Intelligence Estimates
on Intervention by Chinese Communists in the Korean
War (12 October-24 November 1950), May 4, 1951, RG-
330, entry 199 Central Decimal Files 1951, box 232, file:
CD 092 Korea Folder #5 February 1951-April 1951, NA,
CP.

29. CIA, Situation Summary, October 27, 1950, p. 3,
President’s Secretary’s Files, box 211, file: Situation
Summary, HSTL, Independence, MO; Johnson, American
Cryptology, bk. 1, p. 44; Vanderpool, “COMINT and the
PRC Intervention,” p. 14.

30. Report, Far East Command, ACS/G-2 Trends of High
Level Washington Estimates on Chinese Communist
Intervention, February 23, 1951, RG-23, MacArthur
Memorial Library, Nofolk, VA.

31. Interviews with James Polk, Morton A. Rubin, and
Milton Zaslow; Shelley Davis, “New Exhibit Accents the
War for Secrets in Korea,” Stars and Stripes, September
25, 2000; Office of the Secretary of Defense Historical
Office, oral history. Interview with General M.B.
Ridgway, April 18, 1984, pp. 20-21, DoD FOIA Reading
Room, Pentagon, Washington, DC. See also Laura
Sullivan, “Old Hands Disclose Once-Secret Tales as NSA

opens Exhibit on Korean War,” Baltimore Sun,
September 20, 2000.

32. The best description of the Battle of Unsan is Roy E.
Appleman, South to the Naktong, North to the
7a/i/(Washington, DC: OCMH, 1961), pp. 673-81, 689-
708.

33. CIA, Situation Summary, October 27, 1950, p. 1,
President’s Secretary’s Files, box 211, file: Situation
Summary, HSTL, Inde pendence, MO; message, W
95148, DEPTAR WASH DC to CINCFE et al., October
28, 1950, RG-9, box 112, file: DA WX October 1950,
MacArthur Memorial Library, Norfolk, VA; message. No.
310, Seoul to Secretary of State, October 29, 1950, RG-
59, Decimal File 1950-1954, box 4269, file: 795.00/10-
2950, NA, CP; CIA, Daily Summary #1432, October 30,
1950, p. 1, CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP78-0617A006100020051-3, NA, CP.

34. Message, GX 26711 KGI, CG EUSAK to CINCFE,
October 26, 1950, RG-338 Records of the Eighth U.S.
Army, entry 133 AG Section, Security Classified General
Correspondence 1950, box 723, file 350.09, NA, CP;
message, G 26900 KGI, CG EUSAK to CINCFE,
October 30, 1950; message, G 26979 KGI, CG EUSAK to
CINCFE, October 31, 1950; and message, GX 27016
KGI, CG EUSAK to CINCFE, October 31, all in RG-338
Records of the Eighth U.S. Army, entry 133 AG Section,

Security Classified General Correspondence 1950, box
723, file 350.09, NA, CP.

35. Message, FRU/FEC 1845, October 27, 1950, and
message, FRU/FEC 1846, October 27, 1950, both in RG-
6, box 14, file: Correspondence, Messageforms,
Mac Arthur Memorial Library, Norfolk, VA. For
Willoughby barring the CIA from the POW cages, see
letter. White to Tarkenton, October 27, 1950; letter, Ewert
to Tarkenton, October 28, 1950; and letter, Ewert to
Tarkenton, October 31, 1950, all in RG-338 Records of
the Eighth U.S. Army: 1946-1956, Assistant Chief of
Staff, G-2, box 55, file: General Willoughby File, NA,
CP; message, C-67919, CINCFE TOKYO JAPAN to CG
ARMY EIGHT, October 31, 1950, RG-9, box 38, file:
Army 8 Out: October 1950, MacArthur Memorial
Library, Norfolk, VA.

36. Vanderpool, “COMINT and the PRC Intervention,” p.
17.

37. CIA, Situation Summary, November 24, 1950, pp. I-
2, President’s Secretary’s Files, box 211, HSTL,
Independence, MO; Vanderpool, “COMINT and the PRC
Intervention,” p. 18; Cynthia M. Grabo, A Handbook oj
Warning Intelligence, July 1972, vol. I, p. 18-4, RG-263,
CIA Reference Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP80B00829A000800040001-6, NA, CP.

38. Message, WST 268, G-2 GSUSA to SSR TOKYO
(Collins to MacArthur Eyes Only), November 11, 1950,
p. 2, RG-16A Papers of Major General Courtney
Whitney, box 5, folder 14, MacArthur Memorial Library,
Norfolk, VA.

39. Message, C 69953, CINCFE TOKYO JAPAN to DA
WASH DC, November 28, 1950, RG-6, box 1, folder 11
Correspondence November-December 1950, MacArthur
Memorial Library, Norfolk, VA.

40. For lack of SIGINT coverage of the Chinese military
prior to the Chinese intervention in Korea, see ASA,
History of the Army Security Agency and Subordinate
Units: FY 195 f vol. 2, pp. 3, 18-22, INSCOM FOIA;
Vanderpool, “COMINT and the PRC,” p. 9; Hatch and
Benson, The Korean War, p. 9; Milmore, #7 Code Break
Boy, p. 65. For lack of Chinese linguists, see ASA,
Pacific, Summary Annual Report, FY 1951, p. 63,
INSCOM FOIA; ASA, History of the Army Security
Agency and Subordinate Units, FY 1951, vol. 2, p. 8,
INSCOM FOIA. Quote about lack of intelligence on
Chinese forces from memorandum, Banfill to
Commanding General, Location and Disposition of the
CCF in Korea, December 14, 1950, RG-554, Records of
the Far East Command, entry 16 ACofS, G-2 Executive
(Coordination) Division General Correspondence
Decimal Files, box 23, file 350.09 Book #3, NA, CP.

41. Matthew B. Ridgway, Soldier(NQw York: Harper,
1956), p. 205; G-2 Briefing Notes for Lt. General
Matthew W. Ridgway, December 26, 1950, pp. 3^, RG-
338, Records of the Eighth U.S. Army 1946-1956, entry
117 EUSAK ACofS, G-2 Intelligence Admin Files 1950-
1955, box 51, NA, CP.

42. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 1, p. 55.

43. G-2 Briefing Notes for Lt. General Matthew W.
Ridgway, December 26, 1950, pp. 2-3, RG-338, Records
of the Eighth U.S. Army 1946-1956, entry 117 EUSAK
ACofS, G-2 Intelligence Admin Files 1950-1955, box 51,
NA, CP; Special Study Group of the NS A Scientific
Advisory Board, The Potentialities of COMINT for
Strategic Warning, October 20, 1953, appendix 9,
COMINT as a Source of Advance Warning in World War
II and the Korean Conflict, p. 3, DOCID: 3213594, NSA
FOIA; USAFSS History Office, A Special Historical
Study of USAFSS Response to World Crises: 1949-1969,
April 22, 1970, p. 3, AIA FOIA.

44. Memorandum, Pizzi to Commanding General,

January 2, 1951, RG-338, Records of the Eighth U.S.
Army 1946-1956, entry 118 EUSAK G-2 Action Files,
box 58, file G-2 Action Files 1951 — vol. 1, NA, CP;
Cipher Tele gram No. 103, Mao Zedong to Stalin, January
8, 1951, Cold War International History Project,

http://www.wilsoncenter.org .

45. Memorandum, Tarkenton to Commanding General,
Intelligence Agencies Available to G-2, undated but circa
January 1951, pp. 2-3, RG-338, Records of the Eighth
U.S. Army 1946-1956, entry 118 EUSAK G-2 Action
Files, box 58, file G-2 Action File 1951, Book #1, NA,
CP; checklist, Tarkenton to C/S, “Notes for the
Commanding General,” January 16, 1951, pp. 1-2, RG-
338, Records of the Eighth U.S. Army 1946-1956, entry
118 EUSAK G-2 Action Files, box 58, file G-2 Action
File 1951, Book #1, NA, CP; memorandum, ACofS, G-
2/ASA to OCSigO, Modification of Radio Set AN/CRD-2,
January 19, 1951, RG-319, entry 47E Army G-2 Decimal
File 1949-1950, box 177, file 413.44 4/1/50-12/31/50,
NA, CP; ASA, History of the Army Security Agency and
Subordinate Units: FY 195 f vol. 2, pp. 3, 18-22,
INSCOM FOIA; Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 1, p.

46.

46. Memorandum, Tarkenton to Assistant Chief of Staff,
G2, 1 Corps et al.. Classified Information for Limited Use,
January 2, 1951, RG-338, Records of the Eighth U.S.
Army 1946-1956, entry 117 EUSAK G-2 Intelligence
Admin Files 1950-1955, box 53, file Classified
Information for Fimited Use, NA, CP; message, G-I23I,
CG EUSAK to CG X CORPS, January 3, 1951, RG-338,
Rec ords of the Eighth U.S. Army 1946-1956, entry 133

AG Section, Security Classified General Correspondence
1951, box 785, file 350.09 Jan-Feb, NA, CP.

47. Eighth U.S. Army G-2, “G-2 Brief: Estimate,”
January 15, 1951, p. 3, RG-338, Records of the Eighth
U.S. Army 1946-1956, entry 118 EUSAK G-2 Action
Files, box 58, file G-2 Action File 1951, vol. 1, NA, CP;
memorandum, Tarkenton to Assistant Chief of Staff, G2,
I Corps et al.. Classified Information for Limited Use,
January 14, 1951; memorandum, Tarkenton to Assistant
Chief of Staff, G2, I Corps et al.. Classified Information
for Limited Use, January 23, 1951; memorandum,
Tarkenton to Assistant Chief of Staff, G2, I Corps et al..
Classified Information for Limited Use, January 31, 1951,
all in RG-338, Records of the Eighth U.S. Army 1946-
1956, entry 117 (Al) EUSAK G-2 Intelligence Admin
Files 1950-1955, box 53, file Classified Information for
Limited Use, NA, CP.

48. Memorandum, Tarkenton to Assistant Chief of Staff,
G2, 1 Corps et al.. Classified Information for Limited Use,
January 29, 1951; memorandum, Tarkenton to Assistant
Chief of Staff, G2, I Corps et al.. Classified Information
for Limited Use, February 5, 1951, both in RG-338,
Records of the Eighth U.S. Army 1946-1956, entry 117
(Al) EUSAK G-2 Intelligence Admin Files 1950- 1955,
box 53, file Classified Information for Limited Use, NA,
CP.

49. 1st Radio Squadron, Mobile, First Radio Squadron,

Mobile Historical Report: 1 Jan 1951 thru 31 Mar 1951,
pp. 3^, AIA FOIA; Pierson, A Special Historical Study,
p. 5; Robert F. Futrell, “A Case Study: USAF Intelligence
in the Korean War,” in Walter T. Hitchcock, ed.. The
Intelligence Revolution: A Historical

PerspectiveiW di^hingXon, DC: Office of Air Force
History, 1991), p. 286; John Patrick Finnegan, “The
Intelligence War in Korea: An Army Perspective,” in
Jacob Neufeld and George M. Watson Jr., eds.. Coalition
Air Warfare in the Korean War: 7 95 J( Washington,
DC: U.S. Air Force History and Museums Program,
2005), p. 217.

50. Paul Lashmar, “POWs, Soviet Intelligence and the
MIA Question,” p. 4, presented at the conference The
Korean War: An Assessment of the Historical Record,
Georgetown University, Washington, DC, July 24-25,
1995.

51. Finnegan, “The Intelligence War,” p. 217; confidential
interviews.

52. Message, JCS 88180, CHAIRMAN JOINT CHIEFS
OF STAFF to CINCFE TOKYO Japan, April 11, 1951,
RG-218, JCS Messages Relating to Operations in Korea,
box 9, file JCS Outgoing Dispatches 1/3/51-5/31/51, NA,
CP.

53. Joseph C. Goulden, Korea: The Untold Story of the
^ar(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982), p. All .

54. Radio, WST 268, G-2 GSUSA to SSR TOKYO
(Collins to MacArthur Eyes Only), November 11, 1950,
p. 2, RG-16A Papers of Major General Courtney
Whitney, box 5, folder 14, MacArthur Memorial Library,
Norfolk, VA.

55. Richard D. McKinzie, Oral History Interview with
Paul H. Nitze, Northeast Harbor, ME, August 5-6, 1975,
pp. 268-69, HSTL, Independence, MO.

56. Handwritten working paper of indications for SIE-1,

undated, p. 2, CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP79S01011A000100010028-8, NA, CP;

memorandum. Hooker to Nitze, February 28, 1951, RG-
59, entry 1568 Policy Planning Staff Records 1947-1953,
box 20, file Korea 1951, NA, CP; message, CX 59843,
CINCFE TOKYO JAPAN to DEPTAR WASH DC FOR
G-2, April 10, 1951, RG-319, entry 58 G-2 Top Secret
Cables 1942-1952, box 170, file Japan 3 Jan-31 Aug 51,
NA, CP. For breaking of new North Korean codes, see
60th Signal Service Company, Annual Historical Report,
60th Signal Service Company, Fiscal Year 195 f pp. 16-
17, INSCOM FOIA.

5T Message, GX-3-1440-KGIO, CG EUSAK to CG IX
CORPS et al., March 8, 1951, RG-338, Records of the

Eighth U.S. Army 1946-1956, entry 220 COMGEN
EUSAK Correspondence 1951, box 1638, file March
1951, NA, CP; message, C50802Z, COMNAVFE
TOKYO JAPAN to COM7THFLT, April 5, 1951, RG-9,
box 57, Radiograms — Incoming Navy (XTS) November
1950- April 1951, Mac Arthur Memorial Library,
Norfolk, VA; HQ Eighth United States Army Korea
(EUSAK), Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2,
Intelligence, “Brief Estimate of the Enemy Situation
(Tactical),” April 9, 1951, pp. 4-8, RG-338, Records of
the Eighth U.S. Army 1946-1956, entry 124 (Al)
EUSAK G-2 Formerly Top Secret Intelligence Reports,
box 81, file G-2 Tactical Estimate, NA, CP; message, CX
59843, CINCFE TOKYO JAPAN to DEPTAR WASH
DC FOR G-2, April 10, 1951, RG-319, entry 58, box 170,
file Japan 3 Jan-31 Aug 51, NA, CP; Eighth Army G-2,
“Indications,” April 13, 1951, in Command Report,
Eighth United States Army Korea (EUSAK): April 1951,
sec. 2, bk. 3, Part 5, RG-407, Eighth U.S. Army, entry
429, box 1182, NA, CP. See also Blair, Forgotten War,
pp. 870-71, 873; Roy E. Appleman, Ridgway Duels for
Korea{Co\\QgQ Station, TX: Texas A&M University
Press, 1990), p. 507.

58. CIA, Directorate of Intelligence, memorandum. The
Vietnamese Communists Will to Persist, annex 12, An
Historical Analysis of Asian Communist Employment oj
the Political Tactics of Negotiations, August 26, 1966, p.

xii-18, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Document
No. 0001169545, http://www.foia.cia.gov : GHQ,
UNC/FEC, “Daily Intelligence Summary,” No. 3204,
June 18, 1951, cited in Eduard Mark, Aerial Interdiction
in Three Washington, DC: Center for Air Force

History, 1994), pp. 303, 316.

59. The Soviet air force stand-down lasted for nearly two
weeks, with entire days going by when there were no
signs whatsoever in SIGINT reporting that any Soviet
planes were taking off or landing at Soviet military
airfields. The eerie silence finally came to an end on May
4, 1951, when radio intercepts confirmed that routine
Soviet air force tactical flight activity had resumed. CIA,
memorandum. Cessation of Soviet Far East Tactical Air
Activity, May 12, 1951, p. 1, President’s Secretary’s Files,
box 211, file Situation Summary, HSTF, Independence,
MO.

60. TS Cont. No. 2-19203, memorandum, Wilcox to
Director of Central Intelligence, Soviet AOB and
Significant Air Developments, 11-17 April 1951,
Inclusive, April 18, 1951, Tab A, p. 1, RG-341, entry 214
Top Secret Cable and Controls Division, box 56, file 2-
19200-2-19299, NA, CP; CIA/SIC/N-2M/5 1 , Special
Intelligence Estimate No. 2, Communist Military Forces
in the Korean Area, April 27, 1951, pp. 5, 11, MORI
DocID: 1226087, CIA FOIA.

61. Memorandum, Smith to President, North Korean
Army, July 11, 1951, President’s Secretary’s Files, box
211, file Situation Summary, HSTL, Independence, MO;
Bums, Origins, p. 93; Johnson, American Cryptology, bk.
1, p. 55; Johnson, “A Preliminary Verdict,” p. 9;
Milmore, #7 Code Break Boy, 116-17.

62. Johnson, “A Preliminary Verdict,” p. 10.

63. Bums, Origins, pp. 94-95.

3: Fight for Survival

L Canine background from biographical data sheet.
Brigadier General Ralph Julian Canine, September 1946,
U.S. Army Center of Military History, Washington, DC;
NSA Newsletter, January 1954, p. 1, NS A FOIA.

Z Jacob Gurin and [deleted], “Ralph J. Canine,”
Cryptologic Spectrum, vol. 1, no. 1 (Fall 1969): p. 7,
DOCID: 3217178, NSA FOIA.

3^ Letter, Wenger to Stone, May 13, 1952, RG-38, CNSG
Library, box lOI, file: MISC November 1951-July 1953,
NA, CP; Charles P. Collins, The History of SIGINT in the
Central Intelligence Agency, 7 94 7-7 Washington,
DC: CIA History Office, October 1971), vol. 2, p. 2;
Gurin and [deleted], “Ralph J. Canine,” p. 9; U.S. Army
Military History Institute, oral history. Interview with
John J. Davis, Lt. General, USA Retired, 1986, p. 113,

Army Center for Military History, Washington, DC.

A For AFSA’s SIGINT problems in Korea, see Thomas
L. Bums, The Origins of the National Security Agency:
1940-1 95 2(¥oYt Meade, MD: Center for Cryptologic
History, 1990), p. 93, NSA FOIA; memorandum, EUSAK
G-2 to Chief of Staff, Notes for the Commanding
General, January 16, 1951, RG-338, Records of the
Eighth U.S. Army 1946-1956, entry 118 EUSAK G-2
Action Files, box 58, file: G-2 Action File, vol. 1, NA,
CP; memorandum, G-2 to Commanding General EUSAK,
Intelligence Agencies Available to G-2, undated, RG-338,
Records of the Eighth U.S. Army 1946-1956, entry 118
EUSAK G-2 Action Files, box 58, file G-2 Action File,
vol. 1, NA, CP; message, 12/1908Z, Willoughby to ACSI,
March 12, 1951, MORI DOCID: 3104676 NSA FOIA;
oral history. Interview with Herbert L. Conley, March 5,
1984, pp. 12-1 A, declassified and on file at the library of
the National Cryptologic Museum, Fort Meade, MD;
Benson K. Buffham, “The Korean War and AFSA,” The
Phoenician, Spring 2001: p. 7. For the nightmarish
internal situation at AFSA, see letter, Wenger to Roeder,
December 29, 1950, p. 1, RG-38, Crane CNSG Library,
box 101, file: Miscellaneous N-RCA, NA, CP; letter,
Wenger to Mason, May 19, 1951, RG-38, Crane CNSG
Library, box 101, file: Miscellaneous 1950-1951, NA,
CP; letter. Mason to Wenger, December 22, 1951, RG-38,
Crane CNSG Library, box 101, file: Miscellaneous 1951-

1952, NA, CP.

^ For reorganization of NS A, see AFSA, General Order
No. 1, Staff Assignments, January 9, 1952, NS A FOIA.
For Rowlett’s departure, see letter, Wenger to Mason,
January 17, 1952, RG-38 CNSG Library, box 101, file
MISC 11/51-7/53, NA, CP; NSA oral history. Interview
with Frank B. Rowlett, 1976, p. 372, NSA FOIA; NSA-
OH- 11-82, oral history. Interview with Captain Wesley A.
Wright, USN, May 24, 1982, p. 80, NSA FOIA; Dr.
Thomas R. Johnson, American Cryptology During the
Cold War, 1 945-1 989(VoYt Meade, MD: Center for
Cryptologic History, 1995), bk. I: The Struggle for
Centralization, 1945-1960, p. 93, NSA FOIA.

C Bums, Origins, pp. 77-78; Director's Meeting, October
25, 1951, CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP80B01676R002300070052-5, NA, CP; Daily Diary,
December 17, 1951, CREST Collection, Document No.
CIA-RDP80R01731R0026005300011-9, NA, CP; CIA
TS #29771, memorandum. Smith to Executive Secretary,
National Security Council, Proposed Survey oj
Communications Intelligence Activities, December 10,
1951, President’s Secretary’s Files, Box 211, file:
Situation Summary, HSTL, In de pendence, Missouri;
ASA, Annual Historical Report, Army Security Agency:
Fiscal Year 1953, p. 14, INSCOM FOIA; AC of S, G3,
ASA, Annual Historical Report of the Assistant Chief oj

Staff, G3, Plans, Organization and Training: Fiscal Year
1953, September 1, 1953, p. 14, INSCOM FOIA. For CIA
attitudes toward AFSA’s per for mance, see Ludwell Lee
Montague, General Walter Bedell Smith as Director oj
Central Intelligence, October 1950- February 1953,
December 1971, vol. 5, p. 54, RG-263, NA, CP;
memorandum. Smith to National Security Council, Report
by the Director of Central Intelligence, April 23, 1952, p.
5, CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP80R0 1 73 1 ROO 1 1 00080027-7, NA, CP.

T For Truman’s meeting on June 13, 1952, with Smith
and Lay, see President Truman’s Presidential
Appointments Calendar for June 13, 1952, Matthew J.
Connelly Files, HSTL, Inde pendence, MO.

8^ Memorandum, Bradley to Lovett, July 17, 1952, RG-
218, Bradley CJCS File, box 4, file 334 (A-L1952), NA,
CP; memorandum, Samford to Twining, August 6, 1952,
RG-341, entry 214, box 66, file 2-24400-2-24499, NA,
CP; memorandum, G-2 to Chief of Staff, Brownell
Special Committee Report, August 7, 1952, RG-319,
entry 1 (UD) Army Chief of Staff Top Secret
Correspondence, box 11, NA, CP; Official Diary, August
7, 1952, p. 2, CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP79-0 1 04 lAOOO 100020 158-9, NA, CP; memorandum.
Twining to Secretary of Defense, August 8, 1952, RG-
341, entry 214, box 66, file 2-24500-2-24599, NA, CP;

memorandum, Howe to Armstrong, October 9, 1952, RG-
59, entry 1561 Lot 58D776 INR Subject Files, box 27,
file NS A, NA, CP (this document was reclassified by the
CIA in 2005); Official Diary, October 10, 1952, p. 2,
CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-RDP79-
0 1 04 lAOOO 100020 105-7, NA, CP; Official Diary,
October 11, 1952, p. 1, CREST Collection, Document No.
CIA-RDP79-0 1 04 lAOOO 100020 104-8, NA, CP; ASA,
Annual Historical Report, Army Security Agency Fiscal
Year 1953, p. 15, INSCOM FOIA.

9^ For Truman signing the directive, see President
Truman’s Presidential Appointments Calendar for
October 24, 1952, Matthew J. Connelly Files, HSTL, In
depen dence, MO.

10. Memorandum, President Truman to Secretaries of
State and Defense, Communications Intelligence
Activities, October 24, 1952, CREST Collection,

Document No. CIA-RDP77-00389R000 100090045-8,
NA, CP; NS A, National Security Agency Organization
Manual, April 19, 1954, chap. 3, p. 1, NSA FOIA; CIA
Historical Staff, Allen Welsh Dulles as DCI, vol. 2, pp.
157-58, RG-263, NA, CP; ASA, History of the Army
Security Agency and Subordinate Units for Fiscal Year
1953, vol. 1, pp. 3^, INSCOM FOIA; ASA, Annual
Historical Report ASA G-3 Fiscal Year 1953, p. 16,
INSCOM FOIA.

4: The Inventory of Ignorance

L CIA, Office of Current Intelligence, Caesar- 1, “The
Doctors' Plot/lvXy 15, 1953, p. 13; CIA, Office of
Current Intelligence, Caesar-2, Death of Stalin, July 16,
1953, pp. 1-2, 11-14; CIA, Office of Current

Intelligence, Caesar-4, Germany, July 16, 1953, p. 1, all
in CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Caesar-Polo-
Esau Papers, http://www.foia.cia.gov/cpe.asp .

Z For early HUMINT reporting on the East Berlin riots,
see OCI No. 4491 A, CIA, Office of Current Intelligence,
Comment on East Berlin Uprising, June 17, 1953, CIA
Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Document No.
0000677387, http://www.foia.cia.gov . For NSA
performance, confidential interviews.

T Dr. Thomas R. Johnson, American Cryptology During
the Cold War, 1945-1989, bk. 1, The Struggle for
Centralization, 1945-1 9 60{ToYt Meade, MD: Center for
Cryptologic History, 1995), p. 227, NSA FOIA.

4, Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch
of the Government, Task Force Report on Intelligence
Activities in the Federal GovernmentQAoovQX
Commission Report), May 1955, appendix I, part I,
Report of Survey of National Security Agency, p. 48,
CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP86B00269R0009000 1000 1-0, NA, CP; Johnson,

American Cryptology, bk. 1, pp. 228-29; interview with
Frank Rowlett.

5, CIA 36337-c, “The Foreign Intelligence Program,”
February 10, 1954, p. 5, attached to memorandum. Office
of Intelligence Coordination to Director of Central
Intelligence, NSC Status Report, February 17, 1954,
CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP80B01676R00 1100070001-4, NA, CP; Johnson,
American Cryptology, bk. 1, p. 178. The “very dark”
quote is taken from IAC-D-55/4, Intelligence Advisory
Committee, NSC Status Report on the Foreign
Intelligence Program, July 28, 1953, p. 6, CREST
Collection, Document No. CIA-

RDP80R01731R000800070010-0, NA, CP.

C CIA, Directorate of Intelligence, RP 77-10141CX,
Probable Soviet Reactions to a Crisis in Poland, June
1977, pp. 3, 21-22, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room,
Document No. 0000498549, http://www.foia.cia.gov .

F “Situation in Hungary,” Current Intelligence Digest,
October 24, 1956, p. 3, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading
Room, Document No. 00001 19732,

http://www.foia.cia.gov : CIA, NSC Briefing, Hungary,
October 25, 1956, pp. 1-2, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading
Room, Document No. 00001 19733,

http://www.foia.cia.gov : “The Hungarian Situation (as of
0100 EDT),” Current Intelligence Bulletin, October 27,

1956, pp. 3-4, 13, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room,
Document No. 0000119738, http://www.foia.cia.gov :
memorandum. Office of Current Intelligence to Deputy
Director (Intelligence), Military Activity Connected with
the Hungarian Crisis, October 27, 1956, CIA Electronic
FOIA Reading Room, Document No. 0000119739,
http://www.foia.cia.gov : “The Situation in Hungary (as of
0900, 1 November),” Current Intelligence Weekly Review,
November 1, 1956, pp. 5-6, CIA Electronic FOIA
Reading Room, Document No. 0000119766,
http://www.foia.cia.gov . For Bad Aibling monitoring
these Russian radio transmissions, see David Colley,
“Shadow Warriors: Intelligence Operatives Waged
Clandestine Cold War,” VFW Magazine, September 1997.

L Memorandum, Office of Current Intelligence to Deputy
Director (Intelligence), Military Activity Connected with
the Hungarian Crisis, October 27, 1956, CIA Electronic
FOIA Reading Room, Document No. 0000119739,
http://www.foia.cia.gov : “The Situation in Hungary (as of
0900, 1 November),” Current Intelligence Weekly Review,
November 1, 1956, pp. 5-6, CIA Electronic FOIA
Reading Room, Document No. 0000119766,
http://www.foia.cia.gov .

9^ “New Large-Scale Mobilization in Israel,” Current
Intelligence Bulletin, October 27, 1956, p. 6, CREST
Collection, Document No. CIA-

RDP79T00975A002800070001-3, NA, CP; “Israel
Approaching Complete Mobilization,” Current
Intelligence Bulletin, October 28, 1956, p. 5, CREST
Collection, Document No. CIA-

RDP79T00975A002800080001-2, NA, CP; message, JCS
91289, Joint Chiefs of Staff to Commander in Chief
Strategic Air Command, October 29, 1956, box B206, file
Item B-57673, Curtis E. LeMay Papers, Library of
Congress; CIA, History Staff, Allen Welsh Dulles as
Director of Central Intelligence, vol. 5, p. 12, RG-263,
NA, CP; U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations oj
the United States, 1955-57, vol. 16, Suez
CraA(Washington, DC: GPO, 1990), pp. 798-800, 834,
849.

10. John L. Helgerson, Getting to Know the President:
CIA Briefings of Presidential Candidates, 1952-
7 992( Washington, DC: Center for the Study of
Intelligence, 1996), p. 44.

11. “The Situation in Hungary,” Current Intelligence
Weekly Review, November 8, 1956, p. 8, CIA Electronic
FOIA Reading Room, Document No. 0000119763,
http://www.foia.cia.gov .

12. Op-922 Y2F/jcr, Ser: 000582P92, memorandum. Chief
of Naval Operations to Secretary of State et al.. Marked
Increase Noted in Soviet Submarine Operations Away
from Home Waters, September 22, 1956, p. 2, DDRS;

Watch Committee Report, undated but circa November 6-
7, 1956, RG-218 JCS, Chairman’s File, Adm. Radford
1953-1957, box 47, file ME 1956, NA, CP; Johnson,
American Cryptology, bk. 1, p. 235.

13. TS #141612-e, IAC-D-55/12, Annual Report to the
National Security Council on the Status of the Foreign
Intelligence Program (as of 30 June 1957), September 3,
1957, p. 2, CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP79R00961 A0003001 10011-1, NA, CP.

14. Historical Division, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Summary
Study of Nine Worldwide Crises, Tab 7: Hungarian Crisis,
October 1956, September 25, 1973, p. 2, DoD FOIA
Reading Room, Document No. 984-4, Pentagon,
Washington, DC; Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 1,
p. 235.

15. 3 ohnson, American Cryptology, bk. 1, p. 239.

16. NSA Newsletter, December 1968, p. 3; NSA
Newsletter, November 1977, p. 8, both NSA FOIA.

17. John Prados, The Soviet Estimate(NQw York: Dial
Press, 1982), pp. 41-43; interview with former senior
intelligence official.

18. 3 ohnson, American Cryptology, bk. 1, p. 107.

19. Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch

of the Government, Task Force Report on Intelligence
Activities in the Federal Government, appendix 1 , part 1 ,
“Report of Survey of the National Security Agency,” May
1955, p. 18, CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP86 B00269-R0009000 1000 1-0, NA, CP; “Response
of USCIB to Report on Intelligence Activities in the
Federal Government Prepared for the Commission on
Organization of the Executive Branch of the Federal
Government by the Task Force on Intelligence Activities f
undated but circa June-July 1955, p. 2, DDRS; “Staff D
Comments on Part I of Clark Report,” undated but circa
July 1955, pp. 7-8, CREST Collection, Document No.
CIA-RDP78S05450A000 100 150023-8, NA, CP; CSM
No. 374, CIA, Office of Research and Reports, current
support memorandum, Soviets Plan Extensive High-
Capacity Microwave Systems, March 29, 1956, CIA
Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Document No.
0000234174, http://www.foia.cia.gov : CIA/RR IM-444,
CIA, Office of Research and Reports, Intelligence
Memorandum: Major Telecommunications Goals of the
Soviet Sixth Five Year Plan (1956-60), January 9, 1957,
p. 15, CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-RDP79-
T00935-A000400210004-4, NA, CP; U.S. Air Force
Security Service, History of COMINT Collection
Operations: Fiscal Year 1958, no date but circa 1959, pp.
14, 32, AIA FOIA; James S. Lay, History of the United
States Intelligence Board, Part 2, sec. P, Summary of
USIB Annual Reports to the NSC, no date, p. 194,

CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP79M00098A000200020001-7, NA, CP; Johnson,
American Cryptology, bk. 1, p. 231; David A. Hatch,
“Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?,” Cryptologic Almanac,
February 2003, p. 2, NS A FOIA.

20. The two best sources for details of the U-2 program
are Gregory W. Pedlow and Donald E. Welzenbach, The
CIA and the U-2 Program: 7P54-7P74(Washington, DC:
CIA History Staff, Center for the Study of Intelligence,
1998); and Chris Pocock, The U-2 Spyplane: Toward the
Unknown: A New History of the Early Years{Atg\Qn, PA:
Schiffer Military History, 2000).

21. 1 ohnson, American Cryptology, bk. 1, p. 175.

22. SAPC 6081, memorandum, [deleted] to Project

Director of Operations, NS A Support for AQUA-TONE,
May 9, 1956, CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP33-02415A000100100074-7, NA, CP. Quote from
the “Cold War 101” chapter, p. 49, of the Jack M.
Gallimore home page at

http ://www. aipress . com/j ackmem/ .

23. Memorandum, FLINT Staff Officer to Special

Assistant to the Director for Planning and Coordination,
Review of Implementation of CIA Responsibilities Under
Technological Capabilities Panel, July 11, 1957, CREST
Collection, Document No. CIA-

RDP61S00750A000400050014-6, NA, CP; NSA,
3/0/TALCOM/8-59, Status of Siberian Air Defense
District Installations as ^/[deleted], December 1, 1959, p.
2, CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP78T05439A000500070004-9, NA, CP; CHAL-0914,
Situation Estimate for Project Chalice: Fiscal Years 1961
and 1962, March 14, 1960, pp. 1- 2, CREST Collection,
Document No. CIA-RDP33-02415A000200420002-0,
NA, CP; TCS-7519-60-b, Accomplishments of the U-2
Program, May 27, 1960, p. 6, CREST Collection,
Document No. CIA-RDP33-02415A000 100070007-5,
NA, CP. See also Pedlow and Welzenbach, CIA and the
U-2 Program: 1954-1974, p. 101; Pocock, U-2 Spyplane,
p. 48.

24. Paul L. Allen, “Pusk Bad News for Spy Crews,”
Tucson Citizen, November 23, 1998.

25. The story of the Powers shootdown has been
extensively covered in a number of books and articles,
such as Michael R. Beschloss, Mayday(jAQSM York:
Harper and Row, 1986). For the Russian version of the U-
2 shootdown incident, see Anatoliy Lokuchaev, “Okhota
V Stratosfere,” Aviatsiya i Kosmonavtika, no. 4 (2000): p.
17.

26. For SIGINT identification of ICBM construction
activity at Plesetsk, see Utilization of Aerial
Reconnaissance to Determine the Status of the Soviet

ICBM Threat, September 8, 1959, p. 8, CREST
Collection, Document No. CIA-

RDP92B01090R002600270002-9, NA, CP; TCS No.
5819-59, Tab C, USSR Targets for Highest Priority
Collection, 1959, p. 1, CREST Collection, Document No.
CIA-RDP92B0 1 090R002600270004-7, NA, CP ;

memorandum, Reber to Deputy Director (Plans), ARC
Recommendations for Future Targets as of 14 April 1960,
April 14, 1960, CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP61S00750A000600 150007-1, NA, CP; Deployment
Working Group of the Guided Missiles and Astronautics
Intelligence Committee, Soviet Surface-to- Surface
Missile Deployment, Tab I-P-1, October 1, 1962, p. 18,
CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP78T04757A000300010003-3, NA, CP; Johnson,
American Cryptology, bk. 1, p. 175. For Norwegian
detection of signals coming from Plesetsk, see Rolf
Tamnes, The United States and the Cold War in the High
North{0^\o\ ad Notam forlag AS, 1991), p. 135. For a
description of the construction of the Plesetsk launch site
based on Russian materials, see Steven J. Zaloga, Target
AmericaQAoYdiio, CA: Presidio Press, 1993), pp. 150-5E

27. lohnson, American Cryptology, bk. 1, p. 183.

28. CHAL- 1088-60, The Future of the Agency’s U-2
Capability, July 16, 1960, p. 6, CREST Collection,
Document No. CIA-RDP62B00844R000200 1 60034-9,

NA, CP; letter, Prettyman et al. to Mc-Cone, February 27,
1962, p. 1, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room,

Document No. 0000009451, http://www.foia.cia.gov :
memorandum for the record. Board of Inquiry — Francis
Gary Powers, March 20, 1962, CREST Collection,
Document No. CIA-RDP80B0 1 676R00220007000 1 -2,
NA, CP; Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 1, p. 183;
Beschloss, Mayday, pp. 30, 37, 356-57.

29. Letter, Prettyman et al. to McCone, February 27,

1962, p. 1, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room,

Document No. 0000009451, http://www.foia.cia.gov :
memorandum, Blanchard to Director of Central
Intelligence, Technical Analysis of Powers U-2 Incident,
February 27, 1962, pp. 3-4, CREST Collection,

Document No. CIA-RDP80B0 1 676R00220003000 1 -6,
NA, CP; Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 1, p. 183.

30. Memorandum for the record. Board of Inquiry —

Francis Gary Powers, March 20, 1962, p. 2, CREST
Collection, Document No. CIA-

RDP80B01676R002200020001-7, NA, CP.

5: The Crisis Years

E $654 million SIGINT budget figure from Memorandum
of Discussion at the 473rd Meeting of the National
Security Council, January 5, 1961, in U.S. Department of
State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963,
vol. 25, Organization of Foreign Policy; Information

Policy; United Nations; Scientific M(a//era(Washington,
DC: GPO, 2001), located at

http ://www. state, gov/r/pa/ho/fms/kennedyj f/xxv/index.htn

NSA’s personnel figures from Dr. Thomas R. Johnson,
American Cryptology During the Cold War, 1945-1989,
bk. 2, Centralization Wins, 1960-1 972(¥ort Meade, MD:
Center for Cryptologic History, 1995), p. 293, NSA
FOIA; U.S. House of Representatives, Appropriations
Committee, Military Construction Appropriations for
1964, 85th Congress, 1st session, 1963, p. 487; U.S.
Army Military History Institute, oral history, Lt. General
John J. Davis, USA (Ret.), 1986, p. 136, U.S. Army
Center of Military History, Washington, DC. CIA
personnel and budget figures from report, CIA Activity
Inventory, undated but circa 1963, p. 3, RG-263, entry 36,
box 8, file 726, NA, CP.

Z Memorandum, Secretary of Defense to Executive
Secretary, National Security Council, August 17, 1960,
DDRS; The Joint Study Group Report on Foreign
Intelligence Activities of the United States Government,
December 15, 1960, pp. 35-36, AS ANSA, Matters
Received Since January 1961, box 1, Dwight D.
Eisenhower Library, Abilene, KS.

U Frost background from “Vice Admiral Laurence H.
Frost Is New Director,” NSA Newsletter, December 1,
1960, p. 2; “Admiral Laurence H. Frost, 74, Dies,” NSA

Newsletter, June 1977, p. 4, both NSA FOIA; “Vice Adm.
Laurence Frost, 74, Dies, Former National Security
Agency Chief,” Washington Post, May 26, 1977.

4, Interviews with Frank Rowlett, Louis Tordella,
confidential sources; NSA OH- 1983- 14, oral history.
Interview of Dr. Howard Campaigne, June 29, 1983, pp.
124-25, partially declassified and on file at the library of
the National Cryptologic Museum, Fort Meade, MD.

^ Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 294.

C After leaving B Group in 1964, Shinn served as the
NSA representative on a number of interdepartmental
committees, including the Watch Committee. He died on
December 11, 1968, at the age of fifty-eight. Shinn’s
background from his obituary at NSA Newsletter, January
1969, p. 7, NSA FOIA.

P William D. Gerhard, In the Shadow of War (To the Gulf
of Tonkin), Cryptologic History Series, Southeast Asia
(Fort Meade, MD: Center for Cryptologic History, 1969),
p. 29, NSA FOIA; Robert J. Hanyok, Spartans in
Darkness: American SIGINT and the Indochina War,
1945-1975, U.S. Cryptologic History, series 6, vol. 7
(Fort Meade, MD: Center for Cryptologic History, 2002),
p. 73, NSA FOIA. For information about the North
Vietnamese direction of the Viet Cong insurgency derived
from SIGINT, see SNIE 10-62, Communist Objectives,

Capabilities, and Intentions in Southeast Asia, annex:
Communist North Vietnam’s Military Communications
Nets and Command Structures in Laos and South
Vietnam, February 21, 1962, CIA Electronic FOIA
Reading Room, Document No. 0001166399,
http://www.foia.cia.gov : draft memorandum for the
president. Covert Operations Against North Vietnam,
attached to memorandum, McNamara to Chairman, Joint
Chiefs of Staff, January 3, 1963, RG-200, entry 13230A
Records of Robert S. McNamara, box 119, file Reading
File January 1963, NA, CP.

L Hanyok, Spartans in Darkness, pp. 146^7. For the
switch to KTB, see David W. Gaddy, ed.. Essential
Matters: A History of the Cryptographic Branch of the
People ’s Army ofViet-Nam, 1945-1 975(FoYt Meade, MD:
Center for Cryptologic History, 1994), pp. 111-12. See
also Seymour M. Hersh, The Price of Power: Kissinger in
the Nixon White HouscQAqsm York: Summit Books, 1983),
p. 74n; James L. Gilbert, The Most Secret War: Army
Signals Intelligence in Vietnam(¥ ort Belvoir, VA:
Military History Office, U.S. Army Intelligence and
Security Command, 2003), p. 18; Robert J. Hanyok,
“Book Review: James L. Gilbert, The Most Secret War:
Army Signals Intelligence in Vietnam,” Intelligence and
National Security, Summer 2004: p. 395.

9^ Oral history. Interview with Dr. Ray S. Cline, May 21,

1983, p. 21, LBJL, Austin, TX.

10. Memorandum, Lansdale to O’Donnell, Possible
Courses of Action in Vietnam, September 13, 1960, in
U.S. Department of Defense Pentagon Papers, U.S.
House of Representatives ed., 1971, pp. 1307- 09;
Memorandum of Conference with President Kennedy,
February 23, 1961, National Security Files, Chester V.
Clifton Series, Conferences with the President, vol. I,
JFKL, Boston, MA; Annual Historical Report, 3rd Radio
Research Unit, Fiscal Year 1961, vol. 2, p. 8, INSCOM
FOIA; Gerhard, In the Shadow, p. 29; 509th Radio
Research Group, When the Tiger Stalks No More: The
Vietnamization of SIGINT: May 1961-June 1970, 1970,
pp. 5, 7, INSCOM FOIA.

11. Gerhard, In the Shadow, pp. 30-31; 509th Radio

Research Group, When the Tiger Stalks No More: The
Vietnamization of SIGINT: May 1961-June 1970, 1970,
pp. 6, 11, INSCOM FOIA; Johnson, American

Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 502; The Pentagon Papers, Senator
Gravel ed., vol. 2 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1975), pp. 641-
42; John D. Bergen, Military Communications: A Test for
Technology(N DC: U.S. Army Center of
Military History, 1986), p. 388.

12. HQ Third Radio Research Unit, Annual Historical
Report, 3rd Radio Research Unit, Fiscal Year 1961, vol.
1, pp. 1-2, and vol. 2, p. 2, INSCOM FOIA; Annual

Historical Report, 3rd Radio Research Unit, Fiscal Year
1962, vol. 1, pp. 1-2, INSCOM FOIA; Annual Historical
Report, 3rd Radio Research Unit, Fiscal Year 1963, vol.
3, tab 28, INSCOM FOIA; Donald B. Oliver,
“Deployment of the First ASA Unit to Vietnam,”
Cryptologic Spectrum, vol. 10, nos. 3-4 (Fall/Winter
1991), NS A FOIA; Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2,
p. 503. The stamp in the medical records is from Gilbert,
Most Secret War, p. 7.

13. Gilbert, Most Secret War, p. 8.

14. Report on General Taylor’s Mission to South
Vietnam, November 3, 1961, sec. 7, Intelligence, p. 3,
National Security File, Country File: Vietnam, Report on
Taylor Mission — ^November 1961, box 210, JFKL,
Boston, MA; extract from memorandum #273, no subject,
November 26, 1961, p. 9, Record #195503, Item
#3671510005, George J. Veith Collection, Vietnam
Archive, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX; Pentagon
Papers, Gravel ed., vol. 2, pp. 439, 656-57.

15. Memorandum, Helms to Director of Central
Intelligence, Meeting with the Attorney General of the
United States Concerning Cuba, January 19, 1962,
National Security Archive, Washington, DC;
memorandum, Lansdale to Special Group (Augmented),
Review of Operation Mongoose, July 25, 1962, National
Security Archive, Washington, DC; Director of Central

Intelligence, Report to the President ’s Foreign
Intelligence Advisory Board on Intelligence Community
Activities Relating to the Cuban Arms Build-Up: 14 April
Through 14 October 1962, December 1962, p. 4, National
Security Files: Countries: Cuba, box 61, JFKL, Boston,
MA. For an excellent overall description and collec-tion
of declassified documents relating to Operation
Mongoose, see Lawrence Chang and Peter Kornbluh,
eds.. The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962: A National Security
Archive Documents ReaderQAQssf York: New Press, 1992).

16. JCSM-272-62, memorandum, Lemnitzer to Secretary
of Defense, April 10, 1962, p. 1, National Security
Archive, Washington, DC.

17. Memorandum, Lansdale to Distribution List, Program

Review by the Chief of Operations, Operation Mongoose,
January 18, 1962, RG-59, Central Decimal File, 737.00/1-
2062, NA, CP; memorandum. Helms to Director of
Central Intelligence, Meeting with the Attorney General oj
the United States Concerning Cuba, January 19, 1962,
National Security Archive, Washington, DC;
memorandum, Tidwell to Deputy Director (Intelligence)
and Deputy Director (Plans), Intelligence Support on
Cuba, March 6, 1962, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading
Room, Document No. 0001161975,

http://www.foia.cia.gov : memorandum for the record.
Brig. Gen. Lansdale, Meeting with President, 16 March

1962, March 16, 1962, National Security Archive,
Washington, DC; Director of Central Intelligence, Report
to the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board on
Intelligence Community Activities Relating to the Cuban
Arms Build-Up: 14 April Through 14 October 1962,
December 1962, pp. 4-5, National Security Files:
Countries: Cuba, box 61, JFKL, Boston, MA; Johnson,
American Cryptology, bk. 2, pp. 320, 322.

18. Moody’s background from memorandum, John D.
Roth, U.S. Civil Ser vice Commission to Department and
Agency Incentive Awards Officers, 1971 Federal
Woman’s Award, February 2, 1971, CREST Collection,
Document No. CIA-RDP84-003 13R000 100250007-7,
NA, CP; NSA Newsletter, March 1971, pp. 4-5; NSA
Newsletter, April 1972, p. 5; NSA Newsletter, May- June
1974, p. 7; NSA Newsletter, January 1976, p. 10; NSA
Newsletter, February 1977, p. 4, all NSA FOIA. For
Moody taking command of NSA’s Cuban operations in
July 1961, see Johnson, bk. 2, American Cryptology, p.
322.

19. Memorandum, Tidwell to Deputy Director
(Intelligence) and Deputy Director (Plans), Intelligence
Support on Cuba, March 6, 1962, p. 2, CIA Electronic
FOIA Reading Room, Document No. 0001161975,
http://www.foia.cia.gov : Draft: vol. 4, chap. 2: The Cuban
Missile Crisis, JFK Assassination Records, CIA

Miscellaneous Files, box 7, Document No. 104-10302-
10026, NA, CP; Director of Central Intelligence, Report
to the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board on
Intelligence Community Activities Relating to the Cuban
Arms Build-Up: 14 April Through 14 October 1962,
December 1962, p. 8, National Security Files: Countries:
Cuba, box 61, JFKL, Boston, MA.

20. Memorandum, Lansdale to Distribution List, Program
Review by the Chief of Operations, Operation Mongoose,
January 18, 1962, RG-59, Central Decimal File, 737.00/1-
2062, NA, CP.

21. ASA, Annual Historical Summary, US. Army Security
Agency: Fiscal Year 1962, p. 3, INSCOM FOIA.

22. Dr. Thomas R. Johnson, American Cryptology During
the Cold War, 1945-1989, bk. 3, Retrenchment and
Reform, 1 972-1 980{Y ort Meade: Center for Cryptologic
History, 1995), p. 84, NSA FOIA; U.S. Senate, Select
Committee to Study Governmental Operations, Final
Report of the Select Committee to Study Government
Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities,
Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Intelligence
Activities and the Rights of Americans, bk. 2, 94th
Congress, 2nd session 1976, pp. 744^5, 773; U.S. House
of Representatives, Government Operations Committee,
Interception of Nonverbal Communications by Federal
Intelligence Agencies, 94th Congress, 1st and 2nd

sessions, 1976, pp. 104, 110-11.

23. Memorandum, Lansdale to Special Group
(Augmented), Progress OPERATION MONGOOSE, July
11, 1962, pp. 3-4, Church Committee Files, RG-233, NA,
CP; Director of Central Intelligence, Report to the
President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board on
Intelligence Community Activities Relating to the Cuban
Arms Build-Up: 14 April Through 14 October 1962,
December 1962, pp. 16, 33, National Security Files:
Countries: Cuba, box 61, JFKL, Boston, MA; SC No.
12160/62-KH, untitled CIA report on the agency’s
intelligence collection effort against Cuba, December
1962, p. 4, CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP66B00560R000 100 100 176-0, NA, CP; Chang and
Kombluh, Cuban Missile Crisis, p. 42. Details of the USS
Oxford'^ background and mission from Julie Alger, A
Review of the Technical Research Ship Program: 1961-
1969, undated, pp. 7, 16, 88, NSA FOIA; USS Oxford
(AG- 159) Technical Research Ship History, undated, p. 1,
Ships Histories Division, Naval Historical Center,
Washington, DC. For Castro’s negative reaction to the
presence of the USS Oxfordoff Cuba, see “Castro Says a
U.S. Ship Violated Cuban Waters,” Associated Press,
February 23, 1962. A copy of this AP dispatch, carried in
the February 23, 1962, edition of the Buffalo Evening
News, can be found at

http://members.tripod.eom/-USS_OXFORD/seastories.htr

24. Director of Central Intelligence, Report to the
President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board on
Intelligence Community Activities Relating to the Cuban
Arms Build-Up: 14 April Through 14 October 1962,
December 1962, p. 19, National Security Files: Countries:
Cuba, box 61, JFKL, Boston, MA.

25. Headquarters United States Air Force, Assistant Chief

of Staff for Intelligence, Revisions and Additions to S-25-
62, Aerospace Forces Based in Cuba, supplement to
annex 1, sec. 1, November 1, 1962, pp. 44-48, National
Security Archive, Washington, DC; Arms Control and
Disarmament Agency, SC No. 08088/63-KH, The 1962
Soviet Arms Build-Up in Cuba, 1963, p. 1, CREST
Collection, Document No. CIA-

RDP78T05439A000300 1300 13-4, NA, CP; CIA, SC
03387/64, DD/I staff study, Cuba 1962: Khrushchev’s
Miscalculated Risk, February 13, 1964, pp. 24-25, RG-
263, entry 82, box 35, MORI DocID: 120333, NA, CP;
lohnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 323.

26. Memorandum, Lansdale to Special Group
(Augmented), Operation Mongoose Progress, July 11,
1962, pp. 3-4, JFK Assassination Rec ords, HSCA (RG-
233), NA, CP; memorandum, OP-922Y to Secretary of
the Navy, Navy Participation in Increased SIGINT
Program for Cuba, July 19, 1962, in NSA and the Cuban
Missile Crisis: Document Archive of Declassified Files

from the Cuban Missile Crisis, http://www.nsa.gov/cuba .

27. CIA, Office of Research and Reports, CIA/RR EP 60-

73-S4, Electronics Facilities in Cuba, November 1960,
CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-

RDP79T01049A002 10009000 1-8, NA, CP; CIA, Office
of Research and Reports, CIA/RR CB 62-65, Current
Support Brief: Possible Use of Military Microwave
Network in Cuba for Command-Control Purposes,
November 2, 1962, CREST Collection, Document No.
CIA-RDP79T01003A001300200001-4, NA, CP; Arms
Control and Disarmament Agency, SC No. 08088/63-KH,
The 1962 Soviet Arms Build-Up in Cuba, 1963, p. 78,
CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-

RDP78T05439A000300 1300 13-4, NA, CP; CIA/ORR,
SC 03387/64, DD/I staff study, Cuba 1962: Khrushchev’s
Miscalculated Risk, February 13, 1964, map following p.
24, RG-263, entry 82, box 35, MORI DocID: 120333,
NA, CP; CIA, Office of Research and Reports, CIA/RR
CB 65-8, Intelligence Brief: Cuba Plans New Nationwide
High-Capacity Microwave System, January 1965, CIA
Electronic FOIA Reading Room, http://www.foia.cia.gov .

28. Thomas N. Thompson, USAFSS performance During
the Cuban Crisis, \o\. 1, Airborne Operations, April-
December 7Pd2(San Antonio, TX: USAFSS Historians
Office, no date), pp. 4-6, AIA FOIA; Victor Marchetti
and John D. Marks, The CIA and the Cult oj

Intelligence(NQSN York: Laurel, 1980), p. 262.

29. Message, 191653Z, DIRNSA to CNO, July 19, 1962,
and memorandum, OP-922Y to Secretary of the Navy,
Navy Participation in Increased SIGINT Program for
Cuba, July 19, 1962, both in NSA and the Cuban Missile
Crisis: Document Archive of Declassified Files from the
Cuban Missile Crisis, http://www.nsa.gov/cuba :
memorandum, Harris to Chief of Operations, Operation
Mongoose, End of Phase /July 23, 1962, p. 5, JFK
Assassination Rec ords, JFK Library Files, box 23, file
Special Group (Augmented) Meetings, Record No. 176-
10011-10063, NA, CP.

30. The USS Oxford'^ operations area (OP ARE A) was
very small, consisting of a one-hundred-mile-long
“racecourse track” along the northern coast of Cuba
between 82 degrees west longitude and 83 degrees west
longitude and running roughly along latitude 23.11
degrees north to 23.20 degrees north. The OP AREA was
subdivided into five zones, numbered one through five,
each twenty miles in length, that ran from just east of
Havana to just west of the port of Mariel. Message,
191653Z DIRNSA to CNO, July 19, 1962, and
memorandum, OP-922Y to Secretary of the Navy, Navy
Participation in Increased SIGINT Program for Cuba,
July 19, 1962, both in NSA and the Cuban Missile Crisis:
Document Archive of Declassified Files from the Cuban

Missile Crisis, http://www.nsa.gov/cuba : Ship’s History:
USS Oxford (AG-159) for CY 1962, January 25, 1963,
Ships Histories Division, Naval Historical Center,

Washington, DC; Deck Log: USS Oxford (AG- 15 9),
entries for period July 16, 1962, through July 31, 1962,
Ships Histories Division, Naval Historical Center,

Washington, DC; Thomas N. Thompson, USAFSS
Performance During the Cuban Crisis, vol. 2, Ground
Based Operations, October-December 7P(52(San
Antonio, TX: USAFSS Historians Office, no date), p. 38,
AIA FOIA. For monitoring the Cuban microwave radio-
relay system, see Bill Baer, “USNS Joseph E. Muller,
TAG- 171,” undated,

http://www.asa.npoint.net/baerO 1 .htm .

31. USS Oxford Deck Log, entry for July 31, 1962, Ships
Histories Division, Naval Historical Center, Washington,
DC. For the Cuban perception of the Oxford'^ mission off
Havana, see Fabian Es-calante, The Secret War: CIA
Covert Operations Against Cuba: 7P5P-d2(Melboume:
Ocean Press, 1995), pp. 138, 185.

32. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 341;
“Lieutenant General Gordon A. Blake, USAF, Is
Appointed Director, NSA,” NSA Newsletter, August 1,
1962, p. 2; “Lt. General Gordon A. Blake to Retire on
May 31,” NSA Newsletter, May 1965, p. 5; “In
Memoriam: Lt. Gen. Gordon A. Blake, Former Director,”

NSA Newsletter, November 1997, p. 2, all NSA FOIA.

33. NSA OH- 1984-7, oral history. Interview with Lt.
General Gordon A. Blake, April 19, 1984, p. 49, NSA
FOIA.

34. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 341;
memorandum for the record. Luncheon Meeting with
Assistant Secretary of Defense John H. Rubel, April 9,
1963, p. 2, RG-263, CIA Reference Collection, Document
No. CIA-RDP80B01676R003000020015-3, NA, CP;
NSA OH- 1984-7, oral history. Interview with Lt. General
Gordon A. Blake, April 19, 1984, p. 98-99, NSA FOIA;
“Lt. General Gordon A. Blake to Retire on May 31,” NSA
Newsletter, May 1965, p. 5, NSA FOIA.

35. SC No. 11649/62, memorandum, [deleted] to

[deleted] (0/IG), Ballistic Missile Shipments to Cuba,
November 16, 1962, CREST Collection, Document No.
CIA-RDP70T00666R000 100 140006-4, NA, CP; SC No.
11655/62, memorandum, [deleted] to Inspector General,
Total Cargo Tonnage Moved to Cuba by Soviet Ships, 26
July-30 September, November 16, 1962, CREST

Collection, Document No. CIA-

RDP70T00666R000100140007-3, NA, CP; SC No.
11664/62, memorandum, [deleted] to [deleted] (0/IG),
DIA and NSA Reporting on the Cuban Arms Build-Up,
November 16, 1962, CREST Collection, Document No.
CIA-RDP70T00666R000100140005-5, NA, CP. Quote

from director of Central Intelligence, Report to the
President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board on
Intelligence Community Activities Relating to the Cuban
Arms Build-Up: 14 April Through 14 October 1962,
December 1962, p. 40, National Security Files: Countries:
Cuba, box 61, JFKL, Boston, MA.

36. National Indications Center, The Soviet Bloc Armed
Forces and the Cuban Crisis: A Chronology: July-
November 1962, June 18, 1963, p. I, CIA Electronic
FOIA Reading Room, Document No. 0001161985,
http://www.foia.cia.gov : Arms Control and Disarmament
Agency, SC No. 08088/63-KH, The 1962 Soviet Arms
Build-Up in Cuba, 1963, p. 8, CREST Collection,
Document No. CIA-RDP78T05439 A000300 130013-4,
NA, CP.

37. For SIGINT reporting on the surge in Soviet shipping
traffic to Cuba, see the following NS A reports: message,
“Unusual Number of Soviet Passenger Ships en Route to
Cuba,” July 24, 1962; message, “Possible Reflections of
Soviet/Cuban Trade Adjustments Noted in Merchant
Shipping,” July 31, 1962; message, “Further Unusual
Soviet/Cuban Trade Relations Recently Noted,” August 7,
1962; message, “Status of Soviet Merchant Shipping to
Cuba,” August 23, 1962; message, “Further Information
on Soviet/Cuban Trade,” August 31, 1962, all in NSA and
the Cuban Missile Crisis: Document Archive oj

Declassified Files from the Cuban Missile Crisis,
http://www.nsa.gov/cuba . For CIA analysis of the
SIGINT reporting on Soviet shipping to Cuba, see
memorandum, Assistant Director, Research and Reports,
to Deputy Director (Intelligence), Further Analysis oj
Bloc and Western Shipping Calling at Cuban Ports,
September 11, 1962, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading
Room, Document No. 0000307720,

http://www.foia.cia.gov : appendix 1, enclosure to OP-
922N memo to SECDEF Ser SSO/00323 of 26 Oct 1962,
in Chief of Naval Operations, The Naval Quarantine oj
Cuba, 1962, Post ’46 Command File, box 10, Operational
Archives, Naval Historical Center, Washington, DC;
National Indications Center, The Soviet Bloc Armed
Forces and the Cuban Crisis: A Discussion of Readiness
Measures, July 15, 1963, p. 4, RG-263, entry 82, box 28,
MORI DocID: 107300, NA, CP.

38. Steven Zaloga, “The Missiles of October: Soviet
Ballistic Missile Forces During the Cuban Missile Crisis,”
Journal of Soviet Military Studies, vol. 3, no. 2 (June
1990): p. 315.

39. SC No. 11664/62, memorandum, [deleted] to

[deleted] (0/IG), DIA and NSA Reporting on the Cuban
Arms Build-Up, November 16, 1962, p. 1, CREST
Collection, Document No. CIA-

RDP70T00666R000100140005-5, NA, CP; CIA,

Inspector General, Inspector General ’s Survey oj
Handling of Intelligence Information During the Cuban
Arms Build-Up, November 20, 1962, pp. 8- 9, CREST
Collection, Document No. CIA-

RDP80B01676R00 1800060005-4, NA, CP.

40. John A. McCone, Memorandum on Cuba, August 20,
1962, p. 1, RG-263, entry 25, box 1, folder 5, NA, CP.

41. Memorandum for the file. Discussion in Secretary
Rusk’s Office at 12 o’ Clock, 21 August 1962, August 21,
1962, RG-263, entry 25, box 1, NA, CP; Memorandum oj
the Meeting with the President, August 22, 1962, RG-263,
entry 25, box 1, NA, CP; memorandum, Soviet MRBMs in
Cuba, October 31, 1962, p. 1, RG-263, entry 25, box 1,
NA, CP.

42. NS A, COMINT report. Status of Soviet Merchant
Shipping to Cuba, August 23, 1962, in NSA and the
Cuban Missile Crisis: Document Archive of Declassified
Files from the Cuban Missile Crisis,
http://www.nsa.gov/cuba . See also CIA, TDCS-
3/520,583, information report. Arrival of Soviet Ships and
Prefabricated Concrete Forms, August 23, 1962, CIA
Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Document No.
0001264810, http://www.foia.cia.gov .

43. CIA, TDCS-3/65 1,139, information report. Arrival oj
Men and Equipment at the Ports of Trinidad and Casilda,

August 24, 1962, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room,
Document No. 0001264817, http://www.foia.cia.gov .

44. SC-08458-62, memorandum, Cline to Acting Director
of Central Intelligence, Recent Soviet Military Activities
in Cuba, September 3, 1962, pp. 1-2, RG-263, entry 25,
box 1, folder 11, NA, CP; Historical Division, Joint
Chiefs of Staff, Summary Study of Nine Worldwide
Crises, Tab 4: Cuban Missile Crisis, October-November
1962, September 25, 1973, p. 2, DoD FOIA Reading
Room, Document No. 984-4, Pentagon, Washington, DC.

45. Memorandum, Assistant Director, Research and
Reports, to Deputy Director (Intelligence), Further
Analysis of Bloc and Western Shipping Calling at Cuban
Ports, September 11, 1962, CIA Electronic FOIA
Reading Room, Document No. 0000307720,
http://www.foia.cia.gov .

46. Thomas R. Johnson and David A. Hatch, Synopsis oj
the Cuban Missile Crisis(F ort Meade, MD: Center for
Cryptologic History, May 1998), p. 1.

47. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 332.

48. The OmskmivQd at the port of Casilda on September
8, 1962, and the Potevaarrived at the port of Mariel on
September 15, 1962. The Potevareturned to Russia, and
by mid-October 1962 it was on its way back to Cuba
carrying twenty- four R-14 intermediate range ballistic

mis-siles, but the U.S. blockade of Cuba was imposed.
The ship and the missiles in its hold never reached Cuba.
Zaloga, “Missiles of October,” p. 316; General Anatoli I.
Gribkov and General William Y. Smith, Operation
Anadyr: U.S. and Soviet Generals Recount the Cuban
Missile CrAA(Chicago: Edition Q, 1994), pp. 45^6;
Dino A. Brugioni, Eyeball to Eyeball: The Inside Story oj
the Cuban Missile Cr A A(New York: Random House,
1990), p. 545.

49. Gribkov and Smith, Operation Anadyr, pp. 29, 34, 39.

50. SC No. 08172/62, memorandum, Guthe to INR/RSB,
Soviet Military Technicians Abroad, September 20, 1962,
pp. 1-2, CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP70T00666R000100140020-8, NA, CP.

51. USAFSS History Office, A Special Historical Study oj
the Production and Use of Special Intelligence During
World Contingencies: 1950-1970, March 1, 1972, p. 52,
declassified through FOIA by the National Security
Archive, Washington, DC.

52. NS A, COMINT report, '"Cuban MIGs Scramble on
Two U.S. Navy Patrol Planes,'' September 11, 1962, in
NSA and the Cuban Missile Crisis: Document Archive oj
Declassified Files from the Cuban Missile Crisis,
http://www.nsa.gov/cuba .

53. Johnson and Hatch, Synopsis, pp. 4-5.

54. NS A, COMINT report, “New Radar Deployment in

Cuba,” September 19, 1962, in NSA and the Cuban
Missile Crisis: Document Archive of Declassified Files
from the Cuban Missile Crisis, http://www.nsa.gov/cuba .:
Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, Marine Corps
Emergency Actions Center, Summary of Items oj
Significant Interest for the Period 200701-210700
September 1962, p. 3, National Security Archive,
Washington, DC; Arms Control and Disarmament

Agency, SC No. 08088/63-KH, The 1962 Soviet Arms
Build-Up in Cuba, 1963, p. 81, CREST Collection,
Document No. CIA-RDP78T05439 A000300 130013-4,
NA, CP; Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 323.

55. Message, OUT76318, Director to [deleted],

September 13, 1962, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading
Room, Document No. 0000242399,

http://www.foia.cia.gov .

56. Message, OUT77481, Director to [deleted],

September 17, 1962, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading
Room, Document No. 0000242402,

http://www.foia.cia.gov .

57. NSA, COMINT report. Further Information on Cargo
Shipments to Cuba in Soviet Ships, September 25, 1962,
in NSA and the Cuban Missile Crisis: Document Archive
of Declassified Files from the Cuban Missile Crisis,

http://www.nsa.gov/cuba .

58. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, SC No.
08088/63-KH, The 1962 Soviet Arms Build-Up in Cuba,
1963, p. 6, CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP78T05439A000300130013-4, NA, CP. These
intercepts are also referenced in Defense Intelligence
Agency, Use of the Intelligence Product, undated but
circa 1963, CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP68B00 255-R000300010009-0, NA, CP.

59. John A. McCone, Memorandum of Mongoose Meeting
Held on Thursday, October 4, 1962, October 4, 1962, p.
2, RG-263, entry 25, box 1, file 41, NA, CP; Thomas A.
Parrott, memorandum for record. Minutes of Meeting oj
the Special Group (Augmented) on Operation
MONGOOSE, 4 October 1962, October 4, 1962, pp. 2-3,
National Security Archive, Washington, DC. Both
documents were released in full in 1994 and 1997
respectively. In one of those laughable attempts at
rewriting history, in 2004 the CIA released into its
CREST database of declassified documents new versions
of the documents, which this time were heavily redacted.
The excised content includes all mentions of the National
Reconnaissance Office, Vice President Lyndon Johnson’s
participation in the meeting, and all discussion of covertly
mining Cuban harbors, for which see “4 October
(Thursday),” CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-

RDP80B01676R001700180033-1, NA, CP.

60. Director of Central Intelligence, Report to the
President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board on
Intelligence Community Activities Relating to the Cuban
Arms Build-Up: 14 April Through 14 October 1962,
December 1962, p. 35, National Security Files: Countries:
Cuba, box 61, JFKL, Boston, MA.

61. NS A, COMINT report. Intercept of Probable Cuban

Air Defense Grid Tracking, October 10, 1962, in A5!T and
the Cuban Missile Crisis: Document Archive oj
Declassified Files from the Cuban Missile Crisis,
http://www.nsa.gov/cuba .: Arms Control and

Disarmament Agency, SC No. 08088/63-KH, The 1962
Soviet Arms Build-Up in Cuba, 1963, p. 81, CREST
Collection, Document No. CIA-

RDP78T05439A000300 1300 13-4, NA, CP; Johnson,
American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 323.

62. CIA/ORR, SC 03387/64, DD/I staff study, Cuba
1962: Khrushchev’s Miscalculated Risk, February 13,
1964, p. 25, RG-263, entry 82, box 35, MORI DocID:
120333, NA, CP; Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps,
Marine Corps Emergency Actions Center, Summary oj
Items of Significant Interest for the Period 200701-
210700 September 1962, p. 3, National Security Archive,
Washington, DC; Johnson and Hatch, Synopsis, pp. 4-5.

63. NSA, COMINT report, Further Information on Cargo
Shipments to Cuba in Soviet Ships, October 11, 1962, in
NSA and the Cuban Missile Crisis: Document Archive oj
Declassified Files from the Cuban Missile Crisis,
http://www.nsa.gov/cuba .

64. CIA, memorandum. Probable Soviet MRBM Sites in
Cuba, October 16, 1962, p. 1, RG-263, entry 25, box 1,
folder 46, NA, CP; memorandum, Lundahl to Director of
Central Intelligence, Additional Information — Mission
3101, October 16, 1962, pp. 1-3, RG-263, entry 25, box
1, folder 50, NA, CP.

65. For details of how the San Cristdbal area was
designated as a possible missile-launching site to be
investigated by a U-2 overflight, see excerpt from
memorandum, Lehman to Director of Central
Intelligence, CIA Handling of the Soviet Buildup in Cuba,
1 July-16 October 1962, November 14, 1962, pp. 23-26,
RG-263, entry 25, box 1, folder 36, NA, CP. In another of
those sadly too frequent instances of the CIA
declassification personnel reclassifying previously
declassified material in the post-9/1 1 era, in 2004 the CIA
released to the CREST database at the National Archives
another version of this document, which this time was
heavily redacted, for which see CREST Collection,
Document No. CIA-RDP80B0 1 676R00 1 700 1 80076-4,
NA, CP.

66. Memorandum for the record, MONGOOSE Meeting
with the Attorney General, October 16, 1962, National
Security Archive, Washington, DC.

67. Confidential interview.

68. NS A OH- 1982-20, oral history. Interview with Harold
L. Parish, October 12, 1982, p. 3, declassified and on file
at the library of the National Cryptologic Museum, Fort
Meade, MD; NS A OH- 1983- 17, oral history. Interview
with Paul Odonovich, August 5, 1983, pp. 123-127,
declassified and on file at the library of the National
Cryptologic Museum, Fort Meade, MD; Johnson,
American Cryptology, bk. 2, pp. 326-27.

69. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 327.

70. Guided Missile and Astronautics Intelligence
Committee, Joint Evaluation of Soviet Missile Threat in
Cuba, 2100 Hours, October 18, 1962, p. 1, RG-263, entry
25, box 1, folder 61, NA, CP; Guided Missile and
Astronautics Intelligence Committee, Joint Evaluation oj
Soviet Missile Threat in Cuba, 2000 Hours, October 19,
1962, p. 2, RG-263, entry 25, box 1, folder 65, NA, CP;
Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 325.

71. CIA, National Indications Center, The Soviet Bloc
Armed Forces and the Cuban Crisis: A Chronology:
July-November 1962, June 18, 1963, p. 40, CIA

Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Document No.
0001161985, http://www.foia.cia.gov : Timothy Naftali
and Philip Zelikow, eds.. The Presidential Recordings:
John F. Kennedy, vol. 2 (New York: W. W. Norton,
2001), pp. 520,582.

72. NSA OH- 1983- 17, oral history. Interview with Paul
Odonovich, August 5, 1983, pp. 127-28, declassified and
on file at the library of the National Cryptologic Museum,
Fort Meade, MD; Johnson and Hatch, Synopsisp. 9.

73. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 329.

74. Two weeks later, on November 4, the NSA
cryptanalysts discovered that the same messages that were
being passed on both teletype links were also being
transmitted simultaneously by the Russian navy’s very
low frequency (VFF) radio broadcast facility at Kudma,
outside the city of Gorki. NSA concluded that neither of
the radio links was providing communications support for
the Soviet missile units in Cuba, suggesting that either the
Kudma VFF radio transmission station or the Soviet
Strategic Rocket Forces’ primary high frequency radio
transmitter facility at Perkushkovo, outside Moscow, was
performing this function. Headquarters United States Air
Force, Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Revisions
and Additions to S-25-62, Aerospace Forces Based in
Cuba, supplement to annex 1, sec. 1, November 1, 1962,
p. 32a, National Security Archive, Washington, DC;

Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, SC No.
08088/63-KH, The 1962 Soviet Arms Build-Up in Cuba,
1963, pp. 78-79, CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP78T05439A000300130013-4, NA, CP; NPIC/R-
1047/63, photographic interpretation report, Soviet
Communications Facilities in Cuba, January 1963,
CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP78B04560A001000010081-8, NA, CP.

75. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 329.

76. National Indications Center, The Soviet Bloc Armed
Forces and the Cuban Crisis: A Chronology: July-
November 1962, June 18, 1963, p. 48, CIA Electronic
FOIA Reading Room, Document No. 0001161985,
http://www.foia.cia.gov .

77. CIA, DD/I staff study. The Soviet Missile Base
Venture in Cuba, February 17, 1964, p. 90, CIA
Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Caesar-Polo-Esau
Papers, http://www.foia.cia.gov/cpe.asp .

78. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 329;
message, 230750Z, USN-22 to DIST NOVEMBER
WHISKEY/ALPHA, SIGINT Readiness Bravo, Owen,
Spot Report No. 4, October 23, 1962; message, 2309 1 OZ,
USN-22 to NOVEMBER WHISKEY/ALPHA, SIGINT
Readiness Bravo, Owen, Spot Report No. 5, October 23,
1962, both in NSA and the Cuban Missile Crisis:

Document Archive of Declassified Files from the Cuban
Missile Crisis, http://www.nsa.gov/cuba . See also Philip
Zelikow and Ernest May, eds., The Presidential
Recordings: John F. Kennedy, vol. 3 (New York: W. W.
Norton, 2001), p. 184.

79. CIA, memorandum. The Crisis: USSR/Cuba, October
24, 1962, p. i, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room,
Document No. 0000725840, http://www.foia.cia.gov :
memorandum for the director. Your Briefings of the NSC
Executive Committee, November 3, 1962, p. 1, RG-263,
entry 25, box 2, folder 109, NA, CP; National Indications
Center, The Soviet Bloc Armed Forces and the Cuban
Crisis: A Chronology: July-November 1962, June 18,
1963, p. 52, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room,
Document No. 000II6I985, http://www.foia.cia.gov :
National Indications Center, The Soviet Bloc Armed
Forces and the Cuban Crisis: A Discussion of Readiness
Measures, July 15, 1963, p. 14, RG-263, entry 82, box 28,
MORI DocID: 107300, NA, CP; Zelikow and May,
Presidential Recordings, vol. 3, p. 184.

80. The eight ships that SIGINT indicated had reversed
course were the freighters Yuri Gagarin, Klimov sk,
Poltava, Dolmatova, Metallurg Kurako, Urgench, Fizik
Vavilov, and Krasnograd. CIA, memorandum. The Crisis:
USSR/Cuba, October 25, 1962, p. II- 1, CIA Electronic
FOIA Reading Room, Document No. 0000725841,

http://www.foia.cia.gov : CIA, Background Material for
24 October, sec. 3, Soviet Shipping to Cuba, CREST
Collection, Document No. CIA-RDP 80B01 676-

ROO 18000 100 15-8, NA, CP; CIA, DD/I staff study. The
Soviet Missile Base Venture in Cuba, February 17, 1964,
p. 89, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Caesar-Polo-
Esau Papers, http://www.foia.cia.gov/cpe.asp .

81. Robert F. Kennedy, Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the
Cuban Missile Cr A/^(New York: W. W. Norton, 1969), p.
60.

82. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 329.

83. Zelikow and May, Presidential Recordings, vol. 3, p.
184.

84. National Indications Center, The Soviet Bloc Armed
Forces and the Cuban Crisis: A Discussion of Readiness
Measures, July 15, 1963, p. 10, CIA Electronic FOIA
Reading Room, Document No. 0001161983,
http://www.foia.cia.gov .

85. Norman Klar, Confessions of a Code Breaker (Tales
From Decrypt){pnYdiiQ\y published, 2004), pp. 137-38;
Zelikow and May, Presidential Recordings, vol. 3, p. 185.

86. Chief of Naval Operations, The Naval Quarantine oj
Cuba, 1962, p. 49, Post ’46 Command File, box 10,
Operational Archives, Naval Historical Center,

Washington, DC.

87. CIA, memorandum. The Crisis: USSR/Cuba, October

24, 1962, pp. 3-4, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room,
Document No. 0000725840, http://www.foia.cia.gov :
CIA, memorandum. The Crisis: USSR/Cuba, October 25,
1962, pp. 2-3, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room,
Document No. 0000725841, http://www.foia.cia.gov :
CIA, Background Material for 24 October, pp. 2-3,
CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP80B01676R00 18000 100 15-8, NA, CP; memorandum
for the director. Your Briefings of the NSC Executive
Committee, November 3, 1962, p. 1, RG-263, entry 25,
box 2, folder 109, NA, CP; Chief of Naval Operations,
The Naval Quarantine of Cuba, 1962, pp. 49-50, Post ’46
Command File, box 10, Operational Archives, Naval
Historical Center, Washington, DC; Zelikow and May,
Presidential Recordings, vol. 3, pp. 185, 187.

88. Chief of Naval Operations, The Naval Quarantine oj
Cuba, 1962, pp. 49-50, Post ’46 Command File, box 10,
Operational Archives, Naval Historical Center,
Washington, DC.

89. CIA, memorandum. The Crisis: USSR/Cuba, October

25, 1962, pp. 2-3, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room,

Document No. 0000725841, http://www.foia.cia.gov :
CIA, Background Material for 25 October, CREST
Collection, Document No. CIA-

RDP80B01676R00 18000 100 16-7, NA, CP; memorandum
for the file, Executive Committee Meeting 10/25/62 —
10:00 a.m., October 25, 1962, CREST Collection,
Document No. CIA-RDP80B0 1 676R00 1 900 1 00027-4,
NA, CP; National Indications Center, The Soviet Bloc
Armed Forces and the Cuban Crisis: A Discussion oj
Readiness Changes, July 15, 1963, p. 15, RG-263, entry
82, box 28, MORI DocID: 107300, NA, CP; Zelikow and
May, Presidential Recordings, vol. 3, p. 235.

90. CIA, memorandum. The Crisis: USSR/Cuba, October
26, 1962, pp. 2-4, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room,
Document No. 0000725842, http://www.foia.cia.gov :
Zelikow and May, Presidential Recordings, vol. 3, p. 287.

91. United Nations General Assembly, Document

A/5266, October 22, 1962, p. 2; memorandum for the file.
Meeting of the NSC Executive Committee, 26 October
1962, 10:00 AM., October 26, 1962, p. 2, CREST
Collection, Document No. CIA-

RDP80B01676R00 1900 100009-4, NA, CP.

92. Zelikow and May, Presidential Recordings, vol. 3, p.
290.

93. Chief of Naval Operations, OPNA V 24 Hour Resume
of Events, 300000 to 310000 Oct 62, October 31, 1962,
Operational Archives Branch, Naval Historical Center,
Washington, DC; Commander Ser-vice Force U.S.

Atlantic Fleet, Cuban Quarantine Operations, December
31, 1962, p. 4, Operational Archives Branch, Naval
Historical Center, Washington, DC; memorandum, OP-03
to CNO, Compilation of Lessons Learned/Deficiencies
Noted as a Result of the Cuban Operation, February 20,
1963, p. 12, National Security Archive, Washington, DC.
See also Kennedy, Thirteen Days, p. 86; Raymond L.
Garthoff, Reflections on the Cuban Missile
CraA(Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1987), pp.
56-57n; Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow, eds.. The
Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the
Cuban Missile Cra/^(Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1997), p. 444.

94. NS A OH- 1982-20, oral history. Interview with Harold
L. Parish, October 12, 1982, p. 6, declassified and on file
at the library of the National Cryptologic Museum, Fort
Meade, MD.

95. CIA, memorandum. The Crisis: USSR/Cuba, October

27, 1962, pp. 3-5, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room,
Document No. 0000725843, http://www.foia.cia.gov :
CIA, Background Material for 27 October, CREST
Collection, Document No. CIA-

RDP80B01676R00 18000 10026-6, NA, CP; Zelikow and
May, Presidential Recordings, vol. 3, pp. 356-57.

96. Regarding the August 30 and September 8, 1962, U-2
incidents, see IDEA 0887, memorandum, McMahon to

Cunningham, Mission 127, September 12, 1962, CREST
Collection, Document No. CIA-RDP33-
024 15A000300 150009-2, NA, CP; memorandum,
Lehman to Director of Central Intelligence, CIA Handling
of the Soviet Buildup in Cuba, 1 July- 16 October 1962,
November 14, 1962, p. 12, CREST Collection, Document
No. CIA-RDP80B01676R00 1700 180076-4, NA, CP.

97. CIA, memorandum. The Crisis: USSR/Cuba, October

28, 1962, pp. I- 1-1-2, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading
Room, Document No. 0000725844,

http://www.foia.cia.gov : National Indications Center, The
Soviet Bloc Armed Forces and the Cuban Crisis: A
Discussion of Readiness Changes, July 15, 1963, p. 15,
RG-263, entry 82, box 28, MORI DocID: 107300, NA,
CP; Brugioni, Eyeball to Eyeball, pp. 460, 491. Joint
Chiefs of Staff briefing on U-2 intercept from JCS
Historical Division, Notes Taken from Transcripts oj
Meetings of the Joint Chiefs of Staff October-Nov ember
1962, Dealing with the Cuban Missile Crisis, notes made
in 1976 and typed in 1993, p. 22, National Security
Archive, Washington, DC; Johnson, American
Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 329.

98. NS A OH- 1982-20, oral history. Interview with Harold
L. Parish, October 12, 1982, p. 7, declassified and on file
at the library of the National Cryptologic Museum, Fort
Meade, MD; Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p.

330. For another version of these events, see Seymour
Hersh, “Was Castro out of Control in 1962?,” Washington
Post, October 11, 1987.

99. CIA, memorandum. The Crisis; USSR/Cuba, October
31, 1962, p. 1, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room,
Document No. 0000725847, http://www.foia.cia.gov :
CIA, memorandum. The Crisis: USSR/Cuba, annex:
Evidence on Possibility Cubans May Be Manning SA-2
SAM Sites in Cuba, November 1, 1962, CIA Electronic
FOIA Reading Room, Document No. 000II6I977,
http://www.foia.cia.gov : memorandum for the file, NSC
Executive Committee Record of Action, November 1,
1962, 10:00 AM Meeting No. 16, November 1, 1962, p. 1,
CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-

RDP80B01676R002600090022-3, NA, CP; CIA,
memorandum. The Crisis: USSR/Cuba, November 2,
1962, p. 2, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room,
Document No. 0000725850, http://www.foia.cia.gov :
memorandum by McGeorge Bundy, NSC Executive
Committee Record of Action, November 2, 1962, 11:00
AM, Meeting No. 17, November 2, 1962, CREST
Collection, Document No. CIA-

RDP80B01676R002600090021-4, NA, CP; Arms Control
and Disarmament Agency, SC No. 08088/63-KH, The
1962 Soviet Arms Build-Up in Cuba, 1963, pp. 81-82,
CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-

RDP78T05439A000300 1300 13-4, NA, CP; NSA OH-

1982-20, oral history, Interview with Harold L. Parish,
October 12, 1982, p. 6, declassified and on file at the
library of the National Cryptologic Museum, Fort Meade,
MD.

100. CIA, memorandum. The Crisis: USSR/Cuba,

October 28, 1962, pp. 3-4, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading
Room, Document No. 0000725844,

http://www.foia.cia.gov : CIA, DD/I staff study. The
Soviet Missile Base Venture in Cuba, February 17, 1964,
p. 109, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Caesar-
Polo-Esau Papers, http://www.foia.cia.gov / cpe.asp.

101. CIA, memorandum. The Crisis: USSR/Cuba,

October 29, 1962, p. IV- 1, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading
Room, Document No. 0000725845,

http://www.foia.cia.gov : CIA, Background Material for
29 October, p. IV- 1, CREST Collection, Document No.
CIA-RDP80B0 1 676R00 180001 0029-3 , NA, CP ;

memorandum for the record, October 29, 1962, CREST
Collection, Document No. CIA-

RDP80B01676R001800010029-3, NA, CP; John A.
McCone, Memorandum of Meeting of Executive

Committee of the NSC, Tuesday, October 30, 1962, 10:00
a.m., October 30, 1962, pp. 1-2, CREST Collection,
Document No. CIA-RDP80B0 1 676R00 1 900 1 00009-4,
NA, CP; CIA, memorandum. The Crisis: USSR/Cuba,
annex: Evidence of Cuban Instructions for

Demonstrations, Sabotage Operations in Latin America,
November 1, 1962, p. 1, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading
Room, Document No. 0000725849,

http://www.foia.cia.gov : CIA, memorandum. The Crisis:
USSR/Cuba, November 2, 1962, p. 3, CIA Electronic
FOIA Reading Room, Document No. 0000725850,
http://www.foia.cia.gov .

102. Memorandum, Lehman to Director of Central
Intelligence, CIA Handling of the Soviet Buildup in Cuba,
1 July-16 October 1962, November 14, 1962, p. 1,
CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP80B01676R00 1700 180076-4, NA, CP; confidential
interview. See also Director of Central Intelligence,
Report to the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory
Board on Intelligence Community Activities Relating to
the Cuban Arms Build-Up: 14 April Through 14 October
1962, December 1962, p. 27, National Security Files:
Countries: Cuba, box 61, JFKL, Boston, MA. Quote from
SC No. 12160/62-KH, untitled CIA report on the
agency’s intelligence collection effort against Cuba,
December 1962, p. 5, CREST Collection, Document No.
CIA-RDP66B00560R000100100176-0, NA, CP; Office
of the Secretary of Defense Historical Office, History oj
the Strategic Arms Competition: 1945-1972, part 2,
March 1981, p. 615, DoD FOIA Reading Room,
Pentagon, Washington, DC.

103. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 317.

6: Errors of Fact and Judgment

L This argument is forcefully made in William B. Bader,
“From Vietnam to Iraq: Pretext and Precedent,”
International Herald Tribune, August 27, 2004.

Z The tragic history of the CIA and the Pentagon’s efforts
to insert agents and then commando teams into North
Vietnam between 1958 and 1968 is detailed in Sedgwick
D. Tourison Jr., Secret Army, Secret Annapolis, MD:

Naval Institute Press, 1995); Kenneth Conboy and Dale
Andrade, Spies and Commandos(LdiWYQncQ: University
Press of Kansas, 2000). McNamara quote from W.
Thomas Johnson, “Notes of the President’s Meeting with
Senator Dirksen and Congressman Ford,” January 30,
1968, p. 8, Tom Johnson’s Notes of Meetings, box 2, file
January 30, 1968, FBJF, Austin, TX.

T Memorandum, Forrestal to President, Vietnam,
December 11, 1963, p. 1, Top Secret, Douglas Pike
Collection, Vietnam Archive, Texas Tech University,
Fubbock, TX; Tourison Jr., Secret Army, Secret War, pp.
73-112; Richard H. Schultz Jr., The Secret War Against
HanoiQAQSM York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1999), pp.
31-40; Conboy and Andrade, Spies and Commandos, pp.
81-100; Robert J. Hanyok, “Skunks, Bogies, Silent
Hounds and the Flying Fish: SIGINT and the Gulf of
Tonkin Mystery, 2-A August 1964,” Cryptologic

Quarterly, vol. 19, no. 4-vol. 20, no. 1 (Winter 2000-
Spring 2001): p. 8, November 2005 NSA Gulf of Tonkin
document release.

4, NSA OH- 17-93, oral history. Interview of Milton S.
Zaslow, September 14, 1993, pp. 33-34, November 2005
NSA Gulf of Tonkin document release.

^ Memorandum, Tordella to Fubini, “[deleted]
Operations,” November 23, 1964, p. 1, November 2005
NSA Gulf of Tonkin document release; Hanyok, “Skunks,
Bogies,” p. 10.

G USIB-S-34.1/9, memorandum, Carroll to Chairman,
U.S. Intelligence Board, Ad Hoc Committee Report and
Recommendations Relating to Disclosure of US SIGINT
Successes Against North Vietnam, June 13, 1964, pp. 1-2,
DDRS. For an example of the kind of SIGINT NSA was
producing at the time about North Vietnam’s growing
military involvement in the insurgencies in South
Vietnam and Laos, see National Indications Center,
memorandum, Denny to Watch Committee, Recent
Infiltration of PAVN Personnel into Northern South
Vietnam, July 24, 1964, p. 1, DDRS.

T Memorandum for the record. Briefing of CIA
Subcommittee of House Armed Services Committee — 4
August 1964 — 9:00 a.m., August 18, 1964, p. 13, CREST
Collection, Document No. CIA-

RDP82R00025R000400 16000 1-4, NA, CP.

8^ For SIGINT on increasing resolve of North Vietnamese
navy, see Hanyok, “Skunks, Bogies,” pp. 9-10; spot
report, 2/O/VHN/R03-64, Significant Increase in Activity
of North Vietnamese Naval Communications, June 8,
1964, November 2005 NSA Gulf of Tonkin document
release. For results of OPLAN 34A raids, see Tourison
Jr., Secret Army, Secret War, pp. 114-28; Conboy and
Andrade, Spies and Commandos, pp. 101-15; Marolda
and Fitzgerald, United States Navy, p. 397.

9^ Edwin E. Moi'se, Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the
Vietnam lFar(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1996), p. 51.

10. Desotossfdi^ actually an acronym based on the name of
the first destroyer to conduct one of these patrols, the USS
DeHaven, with standing for “DeHaven Special

Operations Off Tsing-tao.” CINCPAC, 1964 Command
History, pp. 366-67. The author is grateful to Dr. Edwin
E. Moi'se of Clemson University for making a copy of this
document available. See also Edward J. Marolda and
Oscar P. Fitzgerald, The United States Navy and the
Vietnam Conflict: From Military Assistance to Combat,
7959-7Pd5(Washington, DC: Naval Historical Center,
1986), p. 393. For the Navy SIGINT detachment on each
Desoto destroyer, see Dr. Thomas R. Johnson, American
Cryptology During the Cold War, 1 945-1 989(FoYt

Meade, MD: Center for Cryptologic History, 1995), bk. 2,
Centralization Wins, 1960-1972, p. 515, NSA FOIA; oral
history. Interview with Captain Frederick M. Frick,
January 8, 1996, p. 5, Oral History Project, Vietnam
Archive, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX.

11. CINCPAC, 1962 Command History, p. 44, CINCPAC
FOIA; CINCPAC, 1963 Command History, pp. 56-57,
CINCPAC FOIA; CINCPAC, 1964 Command History, p.
367; “The Gulf of Tonkin Incident,” Cryptolog, VobrndiVy-
March 1975: p. 8, November 2005 NSA Gulf of Tonkin
Release; National Cryptologic School, On Watch:
Profiles from the National Security Agency s Past 40
Years(¥oxt Meade, MD: NSA/CSS, 1986), p. 43, NSA
FOIA; Wyman H. Packard, A Century of U.S. Naval
Intelligence(y\f di^hmgton, DC: GPO, 1996), p. 1 14.

12. Memorandum for the record. Chronology of Events
Relating to DESOTO Patrol Incidents in the Gulf oj
Tonkin on 2 and 4 August 1964, August 10, 1964, p. I,
November 2005 NSA Gulf of Tonkin document release;
CINCPAC, 1964 Command History, pp. 367-68; U.S.
Senate, Foreign Relations Committee, The U.S.
Government and the Vietnam War: Executive and
Legislative Roles and Relationships, part 2, 1961-1964,
98th Congress, 2nd session, 1984, p. 284.

13. Description of the Maddoxfrom Jane 's Fighting Ships
1955-1956 (Nqsn York: McGraw-Hill, 1956), p. 412. For

the choice of the MaJJoxbased on space on the 0- 1 deck,
see Don Tuthill, “Tonkin Gulf 1964,” Naval Intelligence
Professionals Quarterly, vol. 4, no. 1 (Winter 1988): p.
19.

14. Many ok, “Skunks, Bogies,” pp. 6-7; message,
DIRNAVSECGRUPAC 012345Z Aug 64,
DIRNAVSECGRUPAC to Distribution, “Gulf of Tonkin
Desoto Patrol,” August 1, 1964, November 2005 NS A
Gulf of Tonkin document release; Moi'se, Tonkin Gulf p.
53. For Herrick and Ogier being generally briefed about
OPLAN 34A, but not told about the dates and times of
planned raids, see Moi'se, Tonkin Gulf p. 60; Delmar C.
Lang, Lt. Col., USAF, Chronology of Events of 2-5
August 1964 in the Gulf of Tonkin, October 14, 1964,
November 2005 NSA Gulf of Tonkin document release.

15. Norman Klar, Confessions of a Code Breaker (Tales
from Decrypt)(^nYdiiQ\y published, 2004), p. 163.

14 Message, DIRNAVSECGRUPAC 180013Z Jul,
DIRNAVSECGRUPAC to DIRNSA et al., “Aug Desoto
Patrol,” July 18, 1964, November 2005 NSA Gulf of
Tonkin document release; message, DIRNSA P2 14/0054,
2II9I22Z, DIRNSA to Distribution List, “Surface
Surveillance (Desoto Patrol),” July 21, 1964, November
2005 NSA Gulf of Tonkin document release; message,
DIRNSA P2I4/0078, 24I805Z, DIRNSA to [deleted],
July 24, 1964, November 2005 NSA Gulf of Tonkin

document release. See also Moi'se, Tonkin Gulf, pp. 52-
55; Klar, Confessions, pp. 163-64; Captain Norman Klar,
USN (Ret.), “How to Help Start a War,” Naval History,
August 2002, p. 42.

17. Marolda and Fitzgerald, United States Navy, p. 410.

18. Unless otherwise stated, all times given in this chapter
are in Gulf of Tonkin time, which the U.S. military
referred to as “Golf’ or “G” time, and which is eleven
hours ahead of Eastern Daylight Time in Washington.

19. For details of the patrol boat attack on North Vietnam,
see Marolda and Fitzgerald, United States Navy, p. 409.
For San Miguel intercept, see message, 310922Z, USN 27
to QUEBEC/QUEBEC, “DRV Naval Communications
Reflect ‘Enemy’ Incursion, 31 July 1964,” July 31, 1964,
November 2005 NSA Gulf of Tonkin document release.

20. Marolda and Fitzgerald, United States Navy, p. 41 1.

21. Marolda and Fitzgerald, United States Navy, p. 411.
For North Vietnamese radar surveillance of the Maddox,
see message, 010546Z, USN 27 to DIST
QUEBEC/QUEBEC, “Possible Reflection Desoto Patrol
Noted DRV Naval Communications,” August 1, 1964,
November 2005 NSA Gulf of Tonkin document release.

22. Message, 011924Z Aug 64, USN-27 to Dist
Quebec/Mike, “DRV Navy May Attack Desoto Patrol,”

August 1, 1964, November 2005 NS A Gulf of Tonkin
document release; Hanyok, “Skunks, Bogies,” p. 13.

23. Message, 012152Z Aug 64, USN-27 to Dist
Quebec/Mike, “DRV Navy May Attack Desoto Patrol,”
August 1, 1964, November 2005 NS A Gulf of Tonkin
document release. See also Marolda and Fitzgerald,
United States Navy, pp. 411-12; Edwin E. Moi'se,
“Tonkin Gulf: Reconsidered,” in William B. Cogar, New
Interpretations in Naval History: Selected Papers from
the Eighth Naval History Symposium{AYinwpo\\s, MD:
Naval Institute Press, 1989), pp. 305-06. For intercepts,
see “The ‘Phantom Battle’ That Led to War,” U.S. News
& World Report, July 23, 1984, p. 59.

24. CINCPAC, 1964 Command History, p. 368; Marolda
and Fitzgerald, United States Navy, pp. 412-13.

25. CINCPAC, 1964 Command History, p. 368; Marolda
and Fitzgerald, United States Navy, p. 414; Moi'se, Tonkin
Gulf pp. 73-74.

2C Message, DIRNSA B205/981-64, 020302Z Aug 64,
DIRNSA to COMSEVENTHFLEET, “Possible Planned
Attack by DRV Navy on Desoto Patrol,” August 2, 1964,
p. 1, November 2005 NSA Gulf of Tonkin document
release; memorandum, Hughes to the Secretary, Incident
Involving Desoto Patrol, August 2, 1964, November 2005
NSA Gulf of Tonkin document release; Hanyok, “Skunks,

Bogies,” pp. 13-14.

27. Marolda and Fitzgerald, United States Navy, pp. 414-
15; Moi'se, Tonkin Gulf, p. 74.

28. The torpedo intercept can be found in message,
020635Z Aug 64, USN-414T to USN-27, August 2, 1964,
November 2005 NS A Gulf of Tonkin document release.
For issuing of CRITIC message, see Johnson, American
Cryptology, bk. 2., p. 516; Hanyok, “Skunks, Bogies,” p.
14.

29. Marolda and Fitzgerald, United States Navy, p. 414;
“The ‘Phantom Battle,’ ” U.S. News & World Report, pp.
59, 63; Moi'se, “Tonkin Gulf: Reconsidered,” p. 306;
Mo'ise, Tonkin Gulf, pp. 73-76.

30. Marolda and Fitzgerald, United States Navy, p. 415;
“The ‘Phantom Battle,’ ” U.S. News & World Report, p.
59.

31. National Cryptologic School, On Watch: Profiles
from the National Security Agency’s Past 40 Yearsifort
Meade, MD: NSA/CSS, 1986), p. 45. NSA FOIA.

32. Lyndon Baines Johnson, The Vantage Point:
Perspectives of the Presidency, 1963-1 9 69 QAqsn York:
Holt, 1971), p. 113; Christopher Andrew, For the
President’s Eyes OnlyQSQw York: HarperCollins
Publishers, 1995), pp. 317-18; “The ‘Phantom Battle,’ ”

U.S. News & World Report, p. 60; U.S. Department of
State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-
1968, \o\. 1, Vietnam 7 P(54( Washington, DC: GPO, 1992),
pp. 590-97.

33. Transcript of telephone call between Johnson and

McNamara, August 3, 1964, 10:20 a.m., tape

WH6408.03, Recordings of Telephone Conversations —
White House Series, Recordings and Transcripts of
Conversations and Meetings, LBJL, Austin, TX; U.S.
Department of State, Foreign Relations, vol. 1, pp. 598-
99, 603; “The ‘Phantom Battle,’ ” U.S. News & World
Report, pp. 60-61.

34. Message, DIRNSA 021268Z, DIRNSA to OSCAR
VICTOR ALPHA, “SIGINT Readiness Bravo Lantern
Established,” August 2, 1964, November 2005 NS A Gulf
of Tonkin document release; Johnson, American
Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 516; Hanyok, “Skunks, Bogies,” p.
18.

35. Hanyok, “Skunks, Bogies,” p. 19.

36. Moi'se, Tonkin Gulf, p. 75.

37. Hanyok, “Skunks, Bogies,” p. 20; oral history.
Interview with Captain Frederick M. Frick, January 8,
1996, p. 10, Oral History Project, Vietnam Archive,
Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX.

38. Johnson, American Cryptology, hk. 2, p. 518. See also
U.S. Senate, Foreign Relations Committee, The Gulf oj
Tonkin, the 1964 Incidents, 90th Congress, 2nd session,
1968, pp. 67-68; CINCPAC, 1964 Command History, p.
369; Marolda and Fitzgerald, United States Navy, p. 423;
Pentagon Papers, Gravel ed., vol. 5, p. 325; Anthony
Austin, The President's lFar(New York: J. B. Lippincott
Co., 1971), p. 277.

39. Marolda and Fitzgerald, United States Navy, pp. 423-
24; Pentagon Papers, Gravel ed., vol. 5, p. 325; Moi'se,
“Tonkin Gulf: Reconsidered,” p. 308.

40. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 518; “The
‘Phantom Battle,’ ” U.S. News & World Report, p. 61.

41. U.S. Senate, Foreign Relations Committee, The Gulf
of Tonkin, the 1964 Incidents, 90th Congress, 2nd session,
1968, pp. 33, 40.

42. National Cryptologic School, On Watch, p. 46.

43. Marolda and Fitzgerald, United States Navy, p. 426;
National Cryptologic School, On Watch, pp. 46-47.

44. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 518; Hanyok,
“Skunks, Bogies,” p. 22.

45. U.S. Senate, Foreign Relations Committee, The Gulf
of Tonkin, the 1964 Incidents, 90th Congress, 2nd session.

1968, pp. 34-35; Moise, Tonkin Gulf, p. 113; Marolda
and Fitzgerald, United States Navy, pp. 426-27; Pentagon
Papers, Gravel ed., vol. 5, p. 325; John Galloway, The
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution(Ku\hQriovd, NJ: Fairleigh
Dickinson University Press, 1972), pp. 290-91.

46. Over the next three hours (seven forty-one to ten forty
p.m.), three separate surface contacts were tracked by the
radar operators of the Maddoxsind the Turner Joy. Herrick
concluded that the “skunks” had to be North Vietnamese
torpedo boats, since the contacts were moving at speeds in
excess of thirty knots.

47. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 520; Marolda
and Fitzgerald, United States Navy, p. 437; “The
‘Phantom Battle,’ ” U.S. News & World Report, p. 61;
Moi'se, “Tonkin Gulf: Reconsidered,” p. 308.

48. Marolda and Fitzgerald, United States Navy, p. 437.

49. Marolda and Fitzgerald, United States Navy, p. 434;
“The ‘Phantom Battle,’ ” U.S. News & World Report, pp.
62-63.

50. Marolda and Fitzgerald, United States Navy, pp. 437-
40; Pentagon Papers, Gravel ed., vol. 5, p. 326; “The
‘Phantom Battle,’ ” U.S. News & World Report, p. 63.

51. Marolda and Fitzgerald, United States Navy, p. 440;
Pentagon Papers, Gravel ed., vol. 5, p. 327; U.S. Senate,

Foreign Relations Committee, The U.S. Government and
the Vietnam War: Executive and Legislative Roles and
Relationships, part 2, 1961-1964, 98th Congress, 2nd
session, 1984, pp. 290-91.

52. National Cryptologic School, On Watch, p. 49.

53. “The ‘Phantom Battle,’ ” U.S. News & World Report,

pp. 62-63; National Cryptologic School, On Watch, p. 48;
U.S. Senate, Foreign Relations Committee, The U.S.

Government and the Vietnam War: Executive and

Legislative Roles and Relationships, part 2, 1961-1964,
98th Congress, 2nd session, 1984, pp. 291-92.

54. U.S. Senate, Foreign Relations Committee, The U.S.

Government and the Vietnam War: Executive and

Legislative Roles and Relationships, part 2, 1961-1964,
98th Congress, 2nd session, 1984, p. 292; Pentagon
Papers, Gravel ed., vol. 5, p. 327.

55. Marolda and Fitzgerald, United States Navy, p. 441;
Pentagon Papers, Gravel ed., vol. 5, p. 327; “The
‘Phantom Battle,’ ” U.S. News & World Report, p. 63.

56. U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the
United States, 1964-1968, vol. 1, Vietnam
7 9d4( Washington, DC: GPO, 1992), p. 609; U.S. Senate,
Foreign Relations Committee, The U.S. Government and
the Vietnam War: Executive and Legislative Roles and
Relationships, part 2, 1961- 1964, 98th Congress, 2nd

session, 1984, p. 292.

5Z Electrical report, 2/0/VHN/T 10-64, DIRNSA to
OSCAR/VICTOR ALPHA, DRV Naval Entity Reports
Losses and Claims Two Enemy Aircraft Shot Down,
August 4, 1964, 2242G, November 2005 NS A Gulf of
Tonkin document release; Hanyok, “Skunks, Bogies,” p.
25.

58. Moi'se, “Tonkin Gulf: Reconsidered,” p. 313.

59. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 520.

60. Moi'se, Tonkin Gulf, p. 197.

61. Oral history. Interview with Dr. Ray S. Cline, May 31,
1983, p. 33, LBJL, Austin, TX.

62. Hanyok, “Skunks, Bogies,” p. 32.

63. Confidential interviews.

64. Electrical report, 2/0/VHN/T 10-64, DIRNSA to
OSCAR/VICTOR ALPHA, DRV Naval Entity Reports
Losses and Claims Two Enemy Aircraft Shot Down,
August 4, 1964, 2242G, November 2005 NS A Gulf of
Tonkin document release; Hanyok, “Skunks, Bogies,” p.
33.

65. Hanyok, “Skunks, Bogies,” p. 34.

66. Ibid., pp. 34-35.

67. U.S. Senate, Foreign Relations Committee, The U.S.
Government and the Vietnam War: Executive and
Legislative Roles and Relationships, part 2, 1961-1964,
98th Congress, 2nd session, 1984, p. 292; “The ‘Phantom
Battle,’ ” U.S. News & World Report, p. 63.

68. Transcript of conversation between Sharp and
Burchinal, 5:23 PM EDT 4 August 1964, in Gulf oj
Tonkin Transcripts, pp. 36-37, Document No. 751, DoD
FOIA Reading Room, Pentagon, Washington, DC. See
also Marolda and Fitzgerald, United States Navy, pp.
441^2; Pentagon Papers, Gravel ed., vol. 5, p. 327; U.S.
Senate, Foreign Relations Committee, The U.S.
Government and the Vietnam War: Executive and
Legislative Roles and Relationships, part 2, 1961-1964,
98th Congress, 2nd session, 1984, pp. 292, n42, 295-96.

69. Marolda and Fitzgerald, United States Navy, p. 442.

70. Transcript of conversation between Sharp and
Burchinal, 5:39 PM EDT 4 August 1964, in Gulf oj
Tonkin Transcripts, pp. 41^2, Document No. 751, DoD
FOIA Reading Room, Pentagon, Washington, DC.

71. U.S. Senate, Foreign Relations Committee, The U.S.
Government and the Vietnam War: Executive and
Legislative Roles and Relationships, part 2, 1961-1964,
98th Congress, 2nd session, 1984, p. 296.

72. Pentagon Papers, Gravel ed., vol. 5, p. 327; National
Cryptologic School, On Watch, pp. 49-50.

73. Pentagon Papers, Gravel ed., vol. 5, p. 327.

74. U.S. Senate, Foreign Relations Committee, The U.S.

Government and the Vietnam War: Executive and

Legislative Roles and Relationships, part 2, 1961-1964,
98th Congress, 2nd session, 1984, p. 296.

75. U.S. Senate, Foreign Relations Committee, The U.S.

Government and the Vietnam War: Executive and

Legislative Roles and Relationships, part 2, 1961-1964,
98th Congress, 2nd session, 1984, pp. 296-91 .

76. NSA, William Gerhard and Jeanne Renee Jones,
Interview with Lt. General Gordan A. Blake, USAF (Ret.),
June 5, 1972, p. 5, November 2005 NSA Gulf of Tonkin
document release.

77. Memorandum for the record. Meeting in the Cabinet
Room, the White House, 10:45 a.m., 19 September 1964,
September 19, 1964, pp. 1-3, CREST Collection,
Document No. CIA-RDP80B01676-R00 140005004 1-9,
NA, CP.

78. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 522;
transcript, oral history. Interview with George Ball /July
8, 1971, p. 14, LBJL, Austin, TX.

79. Moi'se, “Tonkin Gulf: Reconsidered,” p. 320.

80. “The ‘Phantom Battle,’ ” U.S. News & World Report,
pp. 63-64.

81. Hanyok, “Skunks, Bogies,” p. 39.

82. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 522.

83. Hanyok, “Skunks, Bogies,” p. 3.

84. Oral history. Interview with Dr. Ray S. Cline, May 31,
1983, p. 27, LBJL, Austin, TX.

85. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 523.

7: The Wilderness of Pain

T Robert J. Hanyok, Spartans in Darkness: American
SIGINT and the Indochina War, 1945-1975, U.S.
Cryptologic History, series 6, vol. 7 (Fort Meade, MD:
Center for Cryptologic History, 2002), p. 461, NSA
FOIA.

Z Hanyok, Spartans in Darkness, p. 149.

T CIA quote from CIA, interim report. Intelligence
Warning of the Tet Offensive in South Vietnam, April 8,
1968, p. 2, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room,
Document No. 0000097712, http://www.foia.cia.gov . See
also memorandum, Rostow to the President, September 6,
1968, National Security Archive, Washington, DC.

4, State Department, INR briefing note, North Vietnam:
Ashmore and Baggs Given Aide Memoire, April 9, 1968,
p. 1, RG-59, Harriman Files, Lot 7 ID 461, NND 979509,
box 7, NA, CP; NSA, Technical SIGINT Report 002-92,
NSA Correlation Study — POW/MIA, August 21, 1992, p.
16, RG-46, Records of the U.S. Senate, Senate Select
Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, NA, CP; confidential
interviews.

^ The GDRS unit controlling infiltration into the south
was known as Military Region 559 or Transportation
Group 559 (because it was created in May 1959). It
started life with only five hundred people but over time
grew to forty to fifty thousand military and civilian
personnel organized into sixteen units called Binh Trams,
each of which controlled infiltration activities in its own
sector. CIA, Office of Current Intelligence, SC No.
00642/64, Special Report: Viet Cong Infiltration into
Northern South Vietnam, October 23, 1964, pp. 3-5,
MORI Doc ID: 8460, CIA FOIA; ASA, Annual Historical
Report USASA Fiscal Year 1965, pp. 308-09, via Dr.
Jeffrey T. Richelson; Dr. Thomas R. Johnson, American
Cryptology During the Cold War, 1945-1989, bk. 2,
Centralization Wins, 1960-1 97 2(Vovt Meade, MD: Center
for Cryptologic History, 1995), pp.500, 539, NSA FOIA.

C CIA, Office of Current Intelligence, SC No. 05780/64,
intelligence memorandum. Communist Military Posture

and Capabilities Vis-a-Vis Southeast Asia, December 31,
1964, p. 4, Larry J. Berman Collection, Vietnam Archive,
Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX; CIA, Office of
Current Intelligence, SC No. 00682/65, intelligence
memorandum. Communist Troop Movements in Laos,
January 13, 1965, p. 1, Larry J. Berman Collection,
Vietnam Archive, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX;
CIA, Office of Current Intelligence, SC No. 00989/65,
intelligence memorandum. Report of Viet Cong Terrorist
Plans Against US Installations, February 12, 1965, p. 2,
LBJL, Austin, TX; CIA, Office of Current Intelligence,
SC No. 04209/64, intelligence memorandum. Possible
PA VN Tactical Command Headquarters in South
Vietnam, March 31, 1965, pp 1-2, Larry J. Berman
Collection, Vietnam Project Archive, Texas Tech
University, Lubbock, TX; CIA, Directorate of
Intelligence, memorandum. The Matter of Communist
Intentions Re: South Vietnam, April 1, 1965, p. 1, RG-
263, entry 35, box 11, folder 1, NA, CP; State
Department, INR, Vietnam: 1961-1968 as Interpreted in
INR's Production, special annex 1, 1969, pp. 1-3,
National Security Archive, Washington, DC; oral history.
Interview with Dean Rusk 11, September 26, 1969, p. 5,
LBJL, Austin, TX; Many ok, Spartans in Darkness, pp.
109-10.

T “Operation Starlight: A Sigint Success Story,”
Cryptologic Spectrum, vol. 1, no. 3. (Fall 1971): pp. 9-11,

DOCID: 3217148, NSA FOIA; Johnson, American
Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 530; James L. Gilbert, The Most
Secret War: Army Signals Intelligence in Vietnam(F ovt
Belvoir, VA: Military History Office, U.S. Army
Intelligence and Security Command, 2003), pp. 35-36.
For the military aspects of Operation Starlight, see
Brigadier General Edwin H. Simmons, USMC (Ret.), The
U.S. Marines: The First Two Hundred Years, 1775-
1975(Nqw York: Viking Press, 1976), p. 21 1.

8^ Hanyok, Spartans in Darkness, p. 305.

9^ Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 530.

10. Hanyok, Spartans in Darkness, p. 306.

IL Ibid., p. 149.

12. CIA, Office of Current Intelligence, SC No. 03777/66,
intelligence memorandum. Evidence of Continuing
Vietnamese Communist War Preparations, January 24,
1966, p. 4, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room,
Document No. 0000621146, http://www.foia.cia.gov :
untitled CIA draft estimate with supporting documents,
undated but circa June 1966, RG-263, entry 36, HRP 89-
2/00443, box 1 1, file 777 A, NA, CP.

13. Jim Lairson, “8th RRU: Phu Bai 1965-66,”
http://www.npoint.net/maddog/8thin65.htm.

14. William E. LeGro, “The Enemy’s Jungle Cover Was
No Match for the Finding Capabilities of the Army’s
Radio Research Units,” Vietnam, June 1990, pp. 14, 18-
19.

15. 6994 Security Squadron, letter, “360 Reconnaissance
Missions in Quang Tri Province,” September 3, 1966, in
History, 360th Reconnaissance Squadron: July-
September 1966, Microfilm Roll N0736, frame 1695, Air
Force Historical Research Agency, Maxwell Air Force
Base, AF; Project Corona Harvest, USAF Reconnaissance
Operations in Support of Operations in Southeast Asia:
January 1, 1965-March 31, 1968, p. 11, Air Force
Historical Research Agency, Maxwell Air Force Base,
AF.

16. SI-TS-61/PF-4, memorandum, Carroll to Secretary of
Defense, Release of COMINT Pertaining to Gulf oj
Tonkin Incidents of 2 and 4 August 1964, December 13,
1967, November 2005 NSA Gulf of Tonkin document
release; Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 539;
Hanyok, Spartans in Darkness, pp. 307-08.

17. Memorandum, Rostow to President with Attachment,
Situation in the DMZ, 13 October 1966, October 13,
1966, Farry J. Berman Collection, Vietnam Archive,
Texas Tech University, Fubbock, TX; memorandum,
[deleted] to Chief, Far East Area, The Communist Buildup
in Northern South Vietnam, November 4, 1966, pp. 1-2,

CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-RDP78S02149
R000200280007-2, NA, CP; CIA, Directorate of
Intelligence, intelligence memorandum. The Communist
Buildup in Northern South Vietnam, November 4, 1966,
pp. 1-2, Larry J. Berman Collection, Vietnam Archive,
Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX; Hanyok, Spartans
in Darkness, p. 306.

18. CIA, Directorate of Intelligence, SC No. 01393/67,
intelligence memorandum. The Communist Buildup in
South Vietnam’s Northern I Corps, May 11, 1967, p. 1,
Larry J. Berman Collection, Vietnam Archive, Texas
Tech University, Lubbock, TX; memorandum, Rostow to
President, May 12, 1967, Larry J. Berman Collection,
Vietnam Archive, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX;
memorandum, Ginsburgh to Rostow, Possible Attack on
Con Thieu, May 12, 1967, p. 1, Larry J. Berman
Collection, Vietnam Archive, Texas Tech University,
Lubbock, TX.

19. State Department, INR, Vietnam: 1961-1968 as
Interpreted in INR ’s Production, special annex 1, 1969, p.
6, National Security Archive, Washington, DC; General
Bruce Palmer Jr., The 2 5 -Year War: America ’s Military
Role in Vietnam(LQidngion’. University Press of
Kentucky, 1984), p. 79; Bruce E. Jones, War Without
IUWow^(New York: Vanguard Press, 1987), pp. 136-37.

20. Military Assistance Command Vietnam, Operations

in the Cambodia/Laos/SVN Tri-Border Area, circa
January 1968, p. 1 passim, NSF: Vietnam, LBJL, Austin,
TX; James E. Pierson, USAFSS Response to World
Crises, 1 949-1 969{Smi Antonio, TX: USAFSS Historical
Office, 1970), pp. 102-03, AIA FOIA; John D. Bergen,
Military Communications: A Test for

TechnologyiW DC: U.S. Army Center of
Military History, 1986), pp. 247-49; Don E. Gordon,
“Private Minnock’s Private War,” International Journal
of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, vol. 4, no. 2
(Summer 1990): pp. 204-05; Johnson, American
Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 560; Hanyok, Spartans in Darkness,
p. 317.

21. State Department, INR, Vietnam: 1961-1968 as
Interpreted in INR’s Production, special annex 1, 1969,
pp. 1, 6, National Security Archive, Washington, DC;
Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, pp. 539-40;
Hanyok, Spartans in Darkness, pp. 111-12. For Binh
Tram 8 communications in Vinh, see CIA, Directorate of
Intelligence, TCS 15240/71, “Imagery Analysis Service
Notes,” March 26, 1971, p. 3, CREST Collection,
Document No. CIA-RDP78T04759 A0099000 1 00 1 2-6,
NA, CP; Lewis Sorley, A Better /H 2 r(New York: Harcourt
Brace and Company, 1999), p. 218.

22. Hanyok, Spartans in Darkness, p. 113.

23. Ibid., pp. 114-16; confidential interviews.

24. Palmer quote from ASA, The Army's Program for
Command Supervision of Readiness: Command
Presentation by United States Army Security Agency,
September 9, 1969, p. 25, copy of which is in the files of
the U.S. Army Center of Military History, Washington,
DC. For SIGINT successes, see U.S. Army Vietnam
(USARV), Evaluation of U.S. Army Combat Operations
in Vietnam, vol. 2, annex A — Intelligence, April 25, 1966,
pp. A-12-2-A-12-3, Vietnam Archive, Texas Tech
University, Lubbock, TX; SI-TS-61/PL-4, memorandum,
Carroll to Secretary of Defense, Release of COMINI
Pertaining to Gulf of Tonkin Incidents of 2 and 4 August
1964, December 13, 1967, November 2005 NS A Gulf of
Tonkin document release; Johnson, American Cryptology,
bk. 2, p. 543.

25. HQ ASA, Historical Summary of the U.S. Army
Security Agency, Fiscal Years 1968-1970, p. 61,
INSCOM FOIA. The “SIGINT with their orange juice”
quote is from U.S. Senate, Final Report of the Select
Committee to Study Government Operations with Respect
to Intelligence Activities, 94th Congress, 2nd session, bk.
1, 1975, p. 27.

26. Palmer, 25-Year War, pp. 63, 167. For a classified
version of this thesis, see General Bruce Palmer Jr., “US
Intelligence and Vietnam,” Studies in Intelligence, vol.
28, no. 5 (special ed., 1984): p. 42, CIA Electronic FOIA

Reading Room, Document No. 0001433692,
http://www.foia.cia.gov .

27. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 565.

28. Confidential interviews; David Fulghum and Terence
Maitland, The Vietnam Experience: South Vietnam on
Trial, Mid-1970 to 7P72(Boston: Boston Publishing Co.,
1984), p. 127.

29. Confidential interviews with a number of senior U.S.
Army and Marine Corps commanders who served in
Vietnam. Abrams quote from Gilbert, Most Secret War, p.
1; U.S. Army Military History Institute, oral history 87-
17, Interview with General Frederick J. Kroesen, USA,
Retired, vol. 1, 1987, p. 84, U.S. Army Center of Military
History, Washington, DC.

30. CIA, Directorate of Intelligence, intelligence
memorandum, SC No. 08753/67, A Review of the
Situation in Vietnam, December 8, 1967, p. IV-2, CIA
Collection, Vietnam Archive, Texas Tech University,
Lubbock, TX; message, 140014Z DEC 67, JCS to
CINCPAC, December 14, 1967, Larry J. Berman
Collection, Vietnam Archive, Texas Tech University,
Lubbock, TX; Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p.
561; Hanyok, Spartans in Darkness, p. 320.

31. Hanyok, Spartans in Darkness, pp. 320-21.

32. Interim report, Intelligence Warning of the Tet
Offensive in South Vietnam, April 8, 1968, p. 3, CIA
Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Document No.
0000097712, http://www.foia.cia.gov : exhibit 518,
“Treatment of Indications in Finished Intelligence: NSA,”
November 30, 1982, in 82 CIV 7913, General William C.
Westmoreland v. Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc. et
al, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New
York; Hanyok, Spartans in Darkness, p. 326.

33. CIA, memorandum. Comments on Saigon Embassy

Telegram 16107, 5 January 1968, January 5, 1968, p. I,
CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP80R01720R000500090 106-7, NA, CP; State
Department, Director of INR, intelligence note, Hughes to
the Secretary, Continuing Communist Military
Deployments in Northern South Vietnam, January 6, 1968,
pp. 1-2, Earry J. Berman Collection, Vietnam Archive,
Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX; CIA, intelligence
memorandum. The Enemy Threat to Khe Sanh, January
10, 1968, pp. 2-3, CREST Collection, Document No.
CIA-RDP85T00875R001 100070001-8, NA, CP;

memorandum, Rostow to the President, Tet Ceasefire,
January 19, 1968, p. 1, 109th Quartermaster Company
Collection, Vietnam Archive, Texas Tech University,
Lubbock, TX.

34. CIA, interim report. Intelligence Warning of the Tet

Offensive in South Vietnam, April 8, 1968, p. 7, CIA
Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Document No.
0000097712, http://www.foia.cia.gov : ASA, Historical
Summary of U.S. Army Security Agency and Subordinate
Units, FY 1968-1970, 1971, p. 77, INSCOM FOIA.

35. Exhibit 518, “Treatment of Indications in Finished
Intelligence: NSA,” November 30, 1982, in 82 CIV 7913,
General William C. Westmoreland v. Columbia
Broadcasting System, Inc. et al, U.S. District Court for
the Southern District of New York; Many ok, Spartans in
Darkness, p. 326. “Ubiquitous and unmistakable” quote
from Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 562.

36. 2/0/VCM/R32-68, report. Coordinated Vietnamese
Communist Offensive Evidenced in South Vietnam,
January 25, 1968, NSA FOIA.

37. Palmer, “US Intelligence and Vietnam,” pp. 55, 57.

38. CIA, SC No. 07250/68, Warning of the Tet Offensive,
undated but circa April 1968, p. 7, Farry J. Berman
Collection, Vietnam Archive, Texas Tech University,
Fubbock, TX.

39. Westmoreland cable cited in Hanyok, Spartans in
Darkness, p. 326.

40. Exhibit 518, “Treatment of Indications in Finished
Intelligence: NSA,” November 30, 1982, in 82 CIV 7913,

General William C. Westmoreland v. Columbia
Broadcasting System, Inc. et al., U.S. District Court for
the Southern District of New York; Johnson, American
Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 563.

41. CIA, SC No. 07250/68, Warning of the Tet Offensive,
undated but circa April 1968, pp. 7-8, Larry J. Berman
Collection, Vietnam Archive, Texas Tech University,
Lubbock, TX.

42. David Parks, Bien Hoa Air Base: Tet '68,
http://www.vspa.com/bien-hoa-tet-68.htm.

43. Oral history. Interview with Daniel O. Graham, May
24, 1982, p. 15, LBJL, Austin, TX.

44. Harold P. Ford, CIA and the Vietnam Policymakers:
Three Episodes, 79d2-7Pd5(Washington, DC: Center for
the Study of Intelligence, 1998), p. 116.

45. CIA, interim report. Intelligence Warning of the Tet
Offensive in South Vietnam, April 8, 1968, p. 3, CIA
Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Document No.
0000097712, http://www.foia.cia.gov . In 2005, the CIA
declassified another version of this document, which
deleted the substance of this paragraph, for which see
CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP80R01720R000 100080001-8, NA, CP.

46. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 562; Ford,

CIA, p. 116; Hanyok, Spartans in Darkness, p. 331.

47. Hanyok, Spartans in Darkness, p. 333.

48. Message, MAC 01430, GENERAL
WESTMORELAND COMUSMACV to ADMIRAL
SHARP CINCPAC, January 20, 1968, attached to
memorandum, Rostow to President, January 30, 1968,
109 th Quartermaster Company Collection, Vietnam
Archives, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX. See also
Don Oberdorfer, Tet!(HQw York: Da Capo Press, 1984),
pp. 110-11; Jones, War Without Windows, p. 168; John L.
Plaster, SOG: The Secret Wars of America ’s Commandos
in VietnamQAQw York: Simon and Schuster, 1997), p.
179.

49. Theodore Lukacs, Focus on Khe Sanh, Southeast Asia
Cryptologic History Series (Fort Meade, MD: Center for
Cryptologic History, December 1969), pp. 4, 6, NSA
FOIA; Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 561.

50. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 562.

51. Oral history. Interview with Daniel O. Graham, May
24, 1982, p. 21, LBJL, Austin, TX.

52. The best all-around history of the tragic U.S.
involvement in Cambodia remains William Shawcross’s
epic Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction oj
CambodiaQAQw York: Simon and Schuster, 1979). The

military aspects of the Cambodia invasion are well
covered in Keith William Nolan, Into Cambodia: Spring
Campaign, Summer Offensive, 797^(Novato, CA:
Presidio Press, 1970).

53. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 573.

54. Many ok, Spartans in Darkness, pp. 363-64.

55. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 574.

56. Dr. Thomas R. Johnson, American Cryptology During
the Cold War, 1945-1989, bk. 3, Retrenchment and
Reform, 1 972-1 980{¥ ort Meade, MD: Center for
Cryptologic History, 1995), p. 1, NSA FOIA; Hanyok,
Spartans in Darkness,pp. 420-21.

5Z Message, CIA/OCI/WHIZ 741006, “Communist
Combat and Command Units Move Closer to Saigon,”
October 6, 1974, CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP78S01932A000 100100011-5, NA, CP; message,
CIA/OCI/WHIZ 741 1 12, “North Vietnamese 308th
Division May Move South,” November 12, 1974, CREST
Collection, Document No. CIA-RDP78S01932
AOOOlOOl 10010-5, NA, CP; message, CIA/OCI/WHIZ
74 1 2 14, “Vietnam Military Situation,” December 14,
1974, CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP78S01932A000100190027-9, NA, CP; Johnson,
American Cryptology, bk. 3, p. 3; Hanyok, Spartans in
Darkness, pp. 429-30.

58. U.S. Intelligence Board Watch Committee, Watch

Report: Draft — Submitted for USIB Approval, February 5,
1975, CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP93T01468R00100040011-3, NA, CP; National
Indications Center, Draft Watch Report for Watch
Committee Consideration, February 18, 1975, CREST
Collection, Document No. CIA-

RDP93T01468R00100040022-1, NA, CP.

59. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 3, p. 5; Many ok,
Spartans in Darkness, pp. 432-34.

60. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 3, p. 6; Many ok,
Spartans in Darkness, p. 436.

61. DCI briefing for House Foreign Affairs
Subcommittee, The Situation in Cambodia, March 10,
1975, pp. 1-3, DDRS; iohmon, American Cryptology, bk.
3, p. 9; Hanyok, Spartans in Darkness, p. 437.

62. CIA, Directorate of Intelligence, intelligence
memorandum. The Situation in Indochina (as of 1600
EST) No. 1, April 3, 1975, CREST Collection, Document
No. CIA-RDP86T00608R0 00200060001-4, NA, CP;
CIA, Directorate of Intelligence, intelligence
memorandum. The Situation in Indochina (as of 1600
EST) No. 14, April 16, 1975, CREST Collection,
Document No. CIA-RDP79T00865A002500420001-9,
NA, CP; Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 3, pp. 9-10;

Hanyok, Spartans in Darkness, pp. 439-41.

63. Letter, Carver to Schlesinger, April 23, 1975, CREST

Collection, Document No. CIA-RDP

80R01720R000400 110002-0, NA, CP; DCI briefing for
24 April NSC Meeting, The Situation in Vietnam, April
24, 1975, pp. 1-2, CREST Collection, Document No.
CIA-RDP79R01 142A 002100010004-8, NA, CP.

64. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 3, pp. 11-12;
Hanyok, Spartans in Darkness, pp. 442-44.

65. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 3, p. 15.

8: Riding the Whirlwind

L Dr. Thomas R. Johnson, American Cryptology During
the Cold War, 1945-1989, bk. 2, Centralization Wins,
1960-1972,p. 293, and bk. 3, Retrenchment and Reform,
1972-1980, p. 21 (Fort Meade, MD: Center for
Cryptologic History, 1995), NS A FOIA. See also U.S.
House of Representatives, Appropriations Committee,
Department of Defense Appropriations for 1972, 92nd
Congress, 1st session, part 3, 1971, p. 536; U.S. House of
Representatives, Appropriations Committee, Department
of Defense Appropriations for 1975, 93rd Congress, 2nd
session, part 1, 1974, p. 598; U.S. House of

Representatives, Appropriations Committee, Department
of Defense Appropriations for 1975, 93rd Congress, 2nd
session, part 3, 1974, pp. 340, 663; U.S. Senate, Select

Committee to Study Governmental Operations with
Respect to Intelligence Activities, Final Report, 94th
Congress, 2nd session, bk. 1, 1976, p. 340.

Z William Reed and W. Craig Reed, “Thirteen Days: The
Real Story,” Troika Magazine, 2001,
http://www.troikamagazine.com/network/ 1 3days.html.

T OPNAVINST S3270.1, Employment and Operating
Policy for the U.S. Navy HFDF Nets, May 18, 1984, pp.
2-4, U.S. Navy FOIA; OPNAVINST 02501. 5E,
Cryptologic Tasks Assigned to Fleet Commanders in
Chief June 24, 1969, p. 3, U.S. Navy FOIA; NSGINST
C3270.2, Bullseye System Concept of Operations, June
30, 1989, p. 3, via Dr. Jeffrey T. Richelson; NWP-5,
Naval Cryptologic Operations, pp. 3-3-3-4, U.S. Navy
FOIA; 1984 Annual History Report for the Headquarters
Naval Security Group Command, June 5, 1985, sec. 10,
item 1 0.2. 1, COMNAVSECGRU FOIA; Desmond Ball,
“The U.S. Naval Ocean Surveillance Information System
— Australia’s Role,” Pacific Defence Reporter, June
1982, pp. 45-46.

4, The seven technical research ships were the USS
Oxford{AG’TR^-\), the USS Georgetown{AG’TR^-2), the
USS Jamestown{AG’TR^-y), the USS Belmonti^AGTR^-A),
the USS Liberty{AG’TB^-5), the USNS Private Jose F.
Valdez{i:-AG-\69), and the USNS Joseph E. Muller(T-
AG-171). “Technical research ship” section in History oj

COMINT Operations: 1917-1959, undated, RG-38,
CNSG Library, box 104, file 5750/89, NA, CP; “Seaborne
SIGINT Stations,” Cryptologic Milestones, issue 5 (May
1965): p. 2, NSA FOIA; message, JCS 5338,
"‘Contingency Planning for TRS Operations,'' November
6, 1965, DoD FOIA Reading Room, Document No. 845,
Pentagon, Washington, DC; Julie Alger, A Review of the
Technical Research Ship Program, 1961-1969, undated,
NSA FOIA; Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 315;
Wyman H. Packard, A Century of U.S. Naval
Intelligence(y\f di^hmgton, DC: GPO, 1996), p. 114.

5^ Confidential interviews. See also U.S. Senate, Armed
Services Committee, Department of Defense
Authorization for Appropriations for Fiscal Year 1994,
103rd Congress, 1st session, part 7, 1993, pp. 452, 456.

C For building spy satellites to monitor the Soviet ABM
program, see Committee on Overhead Reconnaissance,
TCS-0 108-66, Agenda for COMOR-M-390, November
16, 1966, p. 3, CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP79B01709A000 1000 10029-0, NA, CP; letter. Helms
to Vance, November 21, 1966, CREST Collection,
Document No. CIA-RDP79B01709A000 600060006-5,
NA, CP; memorandum. Land and Killian to Homig,
December 15, 1966, CREST Collection, Document No.
CIA-RDP79B01709A000600060004-7, NA, CP. For the
intelligence effort against the ABM, see Frank Eliot,

“Moon Bounce ELINT,” Studies in Intelligence, Spring
1967; pp. 63-64, RG-263, entry 27, NA, CP; Edward
Tauss, “Foretesting a Soviet ABM System,” Studies in
Intelligence, Winter 1968: pp. 22-23, RG-263, entry 27,
NA, CP; David S. Brandwein, “Interaction in Weapons
R&D,” Studies in Intelligence, Winter 1968: pp. 18-19,
RG-263, entry 27, NA, CP; Donald C. Brown, “On the
Trail of Hen House and Hen Roost,” Studies in
Intelligence, Spring 1969, pp. 11-19, RG-263, entry 27,
box 16, NA, CP; Gene Poteat, “Stealth, Countermeasures,
and ELINT, 1960-1975,” Studies in Intelligence, vol. 42,
no. 1 (1998): pp. 53-54, 57-58, RG-263, NA, CP. Copley
quote from “John O. Copley: Developing Early Signals
Intelligence Programs,” in Robert A. McDonald, ed..
Beyond Expectations — Building an American National
Reconnaissance Capability: Recollections of the Pioneers
and Foun- ders of National Reconnaissance(EdhQsddi,
MD: American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote
Sensing, 2002), p. 79.

P Harvest was retired from use at NS A in 1976. “Harvest:
NSA’s Ultra High-Speed Computer,” Cryptologic
Milestones, issue 13 (November 1968): pp. 2-3, NSA
FOIA; Sam Snyder, “Age of the Computer,” NSA
Newsletter, November 1977, p. 15.

8^ Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 368, NSA
FOIA.

9^ CIA, Report, The Long-Range Plan of the Central
Intelligence Agency, August 31, 1965, p. 29, CREST
Collection, Document No. CIA-

RDP82M00311R000 10035000 1-3, NA, CP; Richard M.
Bissell Jr., Review of Selected NSA Cryptanalytic Efforts,
February 18, 1965, p. 1.

10. The author is grateful to Dr. Jeffrey T. Richelson for
providing a copy of this report. See also memorandum,
Wheelon to DD/S&T, Advanced Planning Progress
Report, May 26, 1965, p. 4, CREST Collection,
Document No. CIA-RDP71B00822R0001001 10007-9,
NA, CP; CIA, External Reviews of the Intelligence
Community, December 1974, p. 10, CREST Collection,
Document No. CIA-RDP87B0 1 034R00070023000 1 -3 ,
NA, CP.

11. See, for example, CIA, memorandum. Areas Highly
Suspected to Contain Soviet ICBM Launching Facilities,
February 21, 1962, CREST Collection, Document No.
CIA-RDP78T05449A 000200010001-0, NA, CP;
Deployment Working Group of the Guided Missiles and
Astronautics Intelligence Committee, Soviet Surface-to-
Surf ace Missile Deployment, October 1, 1962, tab 1, p. 5,
CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP78T04757A000300010003-3, NA, CP; Guided
Missiles and Astronautics Intelligence Committee,
Preliminary Analysis of Missile-or Space- Associated

Facilities at Emba, USSR, March 1963, pp. 4-6, CREST
Collection, Document No. CIA-

RDP78T05449A000200270001-2, NA, CP; CIA,
memorandum. Rocket Engine Test Facility, Perm, USSR,
September 28, 1964, CREST Collection, Document No.
CIA-RDP78T05929 A0002000 10025-1, NA, CP.

12. Memorandum, SC No. 03292/61, Guided Missile Task

Force Comments on AFCIN Concept Papers on Soviet
Missile Deployment, February 14, 1961, CREST

Collection, Document No. CIA-

RDP70T00666R000100130027-2, NA, CP; memorandum
for the file. Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, March 5, 1963, in
Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United
States 1961-1963, vol. 7, Arms Control and
Disarmament(Ndi^\)ingion, DC: GPO, 1995); National
Intelligence Estimate No. 11-2A-63, The Soviet Atomic
Energy Program, July 2, 1963, p. 6, CIA Electronic FOIA
Reading Room, Document No. 0000843188,
http://www.foia.cia.gov : NIE 11-11-66, Impact of a
Threshold Test Ban Treaty on Soviet Military Programs,
May 25, 1966, p. 11, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading
Room, Document No. 0000239460,

http://www.foia.cia.gov .

13. CIA, Photographic Intelligence Center, PIC/JR-
1023/61, Microwave Stations Within a 100- Kilometer
Radius of Moscow, June 1961, CREST Collection,

Document No. CIA-RDP78T04751 AOOO 1000 10025-7,
NA, CP; Economic Intelligence Committee,
Subcommittee on Electronics and Telecommunications,
EIR SR-6, Economic Intelligence Report: Status of High-
Capacity Communications in the Soviet Bloc, October
1962, pp. 2-4, CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP79S01100A000 100 11 0007-1, NA, CP; CIA, Office
of Research and Reports, CIA/RR EP 65-68, Prospects
and Problem Areas for the Development oj
Telecommunications in the Europezan Satellites, 1964-
75, August 1965, CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP79T01049A003100 130001-2, NA, CP. Quote from
Albert D. Wheelon, “And the Truth Shall Keep You Free:
Recollections by the First Deputy Director for Science
and Technology,” Studies in Intelligence, Spring 1995: p.
75, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Document No.
0000752314, http://foia.cia.gov . “Reestablish COMINT
access” quote from memorandum, Wheelon to DD/S&T,
Advanced Planning Progress Report, May 26, 1965, p. 6,
CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP71B00822R0001001 10007-9, NA, CP.

14. Carter background from biographical data sheet, Lt.
General Marshall S. Carter, USA; “Commander,
Diplomat, Executive Ends Distinguished Military
Career,” NSA Newsletter, July 1969, p. 4, NSA FOIA.

15. David Wise and Thomas B. Ross, The Invisible

Government^HosN York: Vintage Books, 1974), p. 198;
David C. Martin, Wilderness of M/rror^(New York:
Harper and Row, 1980), p. 118; Doris M. Condit, History
of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, vol. 2, The Test
of War, 7P5t?-7P53(Washington, DC: GPO, 1988), p.
484; Dino Bmgioni, Eyeball to Eyeball: The Inside Story
of the Cuban Missile Cra/^(New York: Random House,
1990), pp. 85-86; Bruce Lambert, “Marshall Carter, 83,
Intelligence Official and Marshall Aide,” New York
Times, February 20, 1993.

16. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 358.

17. “Poisoned the atmosphere” quote from Johnson,
American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 359.

18. Memorandum, Duckett to D/DCI/NIPE, DCI Report

on the Community to the President’s Foreign Intelligence
Advisory Board, September 1968, pp. 3^, CREST
Collection, Document No. CIA-

RDP71R00140A000 10005000 1-0, NA, CP;
memorandum, ASA/D/DCI/NIPE to Bross, SIGINT
Collection Requirements, December 2, 1969, p. 1, CREST
Collection, Document No. CIA-

RDP80B01138A000100080014-1, NA, CP; “Information
Support to Intelligence Production: The Reality and the
Dream,” Cryptologic Spectrum, vol. 10, no. 4 (Fall 1980):
p. 4, NSA FOIA; Scott D. Breckinridge, The CIA and the
U.S. Intelligence SystemlBouXdQV, CO: Westview Press,

1986), p. 58.

19. “U.S. Electronic Espionage: A Memoir,” Ramparts,
August 1972, pp. 43^4; Chet Flippo, “Can the CIA Turn
Students into Spies?,” Rolling Stone, March 11, 1976, p.
30.

m CIA, Directorate of Intelligence, CAESAR XXXVIII,
intelligence report, Soviet Policy and the 1967 Arab-
Israeli War, March 16, 1970, pp. 3-4, CIA Electronic
FOIA Reading Room, http://www.foia.cia.gov / cpe.asp;
William D. Gerhard and Henry W. Millington, Attack on
a Sigint Collector, the U.S.S. Liberty (Fort Meade, MD:
Center for Cryptologic History, 1981), p. 1, NSA FOIA.

21. Gerhard and Millington, Attack, pp. 2-3.

22. CIA, Directorate of Intelligence, CAESAR XXXVIII,
intelligence report, Soviet Policy and the 1967 Arab-
Israeli War, March 16, 1970, p. 5, CIA Electronic FOIA
Reading Room, http://www.foia.cia.gov /cpe.asp.

23. Gerhard and Millington, Attack, pp. 2-3.

24. US AES S History Office, A Special Historical Study oj
the Production and Use of Special Intelligence During
World Contingencies: 1950-1970, March 1, 1972, pp. 95,
97, declassified through FOIA by the National Security
Archive, Washington, DC.

25. Briefing Notes for Director of Central Intelligence
Helms for Use at a White House Meeting, May 23, 1967,
CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP80R01580A0010210001-5, NA, CP; message,
231729Z, DIRNSA to JCS/Joint Reconnaissance Center,
May 23, 1967, NSA FOIA; USAFSS History Office, A
Special Historical Study of the Production and Use oj
Special Intelligence During World Contingencies: 1950-
1970, March 1, 1972, pp. 97-98, declassified through
FOIA by the National Security Archive, Washington, DC;
Gerhard and Millington, Attack, p. 3; Johnson, American
Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 428; J. F. Freshwater [William K.
Parmenter], “Policy and Intelligence: The Arab-Israeli
War,” Studies in Intelligence, Winter 1969, CREST
Collection, Document No. CIA-

RDP79T01762A000500040020-8, NA, CP.

2C Message, ADP/224-67, DIRNSA to JCS, “Diversion
of USS Fiberty,” May 23, 1967, NSA FOIA; Gerhard and
Millington, Attack, pp. 5, 13; Johnson, American

Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 429. For U.S. Army
Communications Support Unit, see Department of the
Army, Asst Chief of Staff for Force Development, Active
Army Troop List, part 4, June 1968, p. 3, copy in U.S.
Army Center of Military History Fibrary, Washington,
DC.

27. Gerhard and Millington, Attack, pp. 10-12; Fleet Air

Reconnaissance Squadron Two, Aviation Historical
Summary: Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron Two (VQ-
2): 1 Jan 1967 to 31 Dec 1967, March 4, 1969, p. 4, U.S.
Navy FOIA.

28. USAFSS History Office, A Special Historical Study oj
the Production and Use of Special Intelligence During
World Contingencies: 1950-1970, March 1, 1972, pp.
97-98, declassified through FOIA by the National
Security Archive, Washington, DC.

29. Ibid., p. 98.

30. “U.S. Electronic Espionage,” pp. 43-44.

31. Oral history. Interview with Philip Merrill, January
22, 1997, Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection,
Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, Library
of Congress, Washington, DC.

32. The description of this incident is taken from
“Kagnew Station, Asmara, Eritrea,” undated,
http ://www. cdstrand. com/ areas/kagnew.htm.

33. Gerhard and Millington, Attack, p. 3.

34. “Arab States-Israel,” President’s Daily Brief, June 5,
1967, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Document
No. 0000382247, http://www.foia.cia.gov : memorandum
for the record, Walt Rostow’s Recollections of June 5,

1967, November 17, 1968, National Security File, NSC
Histories, Middle East Crisis, vol. 3, LBJL, Austin, TX;
Gerhard and Millington, Attack, p. 3.

35. CIA, Office of Current Intelligence, memorandum.
The Arab-Israeli War: Who Fired the First Shot, June 5,
1967, pp. 1-2, National Security File, Country File:
Middle East Crisis, Situations Reports, LBJL, Austin, TX;
memorandum for the record, Walt Rostow 's Recollections
of June 5, 1967, November 17, 1968, p. 2, National
Security File, NSC Histories, Middle East Crisis, vol. 3,
LBJL, Austin, TX.

36. Crispin Aubrey, Who’s Watching You? Britain’s
Security Services and the Official Secrets Act(Londom
Penguin Books, 1981), p. 142.

37. David Leigh, The Frontiers of Secrecy (London:
Junction Books, 1980), p. 191; Duncan Campbell, “Crisis
in the Gulf 3: Inside Story: Under U.S. Eyes; The West
Has a Hidden Advantage over Iraq,” Independent,
September 30, 1990.

38. For the number of Soviet supply flights, see CIA,

Directorate of Intelligence, ESAU XXXIX, intelligence
report. Annex: The Sino-Soviet Dispute on Aid to North
Vietnam (1965-1968), November 25, 1968, p. 63n, CIA
Electronic FOIA Reading Room,

http://www.foia.cia.gov /cpe.asp: NIL 11-6-84, Soviet

Global Military Reach, November 1984, p. 129, CIA
Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Document No.

0000278544, http://www.foia.cia.gov .

39. NS A OH- 15-80, oral history. Interview with Robert L.
Wilson, May 6, 1980, p. 10, NS A February 2007 USS
Fiberty Release.

40. “Arab States-Israel,” President's Daily Brief, June 7,

1967, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Document
No. 0000382249, http://www.foia.cia.gov : “Arab States-
Israel,” President’s Daily Brief, June 9, 1967, CIA
Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Document No.

0000382251, http://www.foia.cia.gov .

41. The best single account of the Israeli attack on the
USS LibertyvQxmim, James M. Ennes Jr., Assault on the
Liberty(HQw York: Random House, 1979). The Israeli
version of events is contained in Hirsh Goodman and
Zeev Schiff, “The Attack on the Fiberty,” Atlantic
Monthly, September 1984, pp. 78-84. For the SIGINT
aspects of the LibertymcidQni, see Gerhard and
Millington, Attack, pp. 18, 26; 2nd Radio Battalion, FMF,
Command Chronology, 2nd Radio Battalion, FMF:
January 1, 1967-June 30, 1967, U.S. Marine Corps
Historical Center, Quantico, VA. The literature on
whether the Israeli attack was an accident or deliberate is
voluminous and getting larger every day. See, for
example, Reverdy S. Fishel, “The Attack on the Fiberty:

An ‘Accident’?,” Journal of Intelligence and
Counterintelligence, vol. 8, no. 3 (Fall 1995): p. 349.

42. CIA, intelligence memorandum. The Israeli Attack on
the USS Liberty, June 13, 1967, p. 3, CIA Electronic
FOIA Reading Room, Document No. 0001359216,
http://www.foia.cia.gov .

43. Ibid.; USAFSS History Office, A Special Historical
Study of the Production and Use of Special Intelligence
During World Contingencies: 1950-1970, March I, 1972,
p. 102, declassified through FOIA by the National
Security Archive, Washington, DC.

44. For Kosygin’s June 10, 1967, message, see message,
Kosygin to Johnson, June 19, 1967, National Security
File, Head of State Correspondence, USSR, Washington-
Moscow “Hot Line” Exchange, LBJL, Austin, TX. See
also Lyndon Baines Johnson, The Vantage Point:
Perspectives of the Presidency: 1963-1 9 69 (Hqsn York:
Holt, 1971), p. 302; L. Wainstein, Some Aspects of the
US. Involvement in the Middle East Crisis, May-June
7 /(Washington, DC: Institute for Defense Analysis,
1968), p. 123, DoD FOIA Reading Room, Pentagon,
Washington, DC. Helms quote from Robert M. Hathaway
and Russell Jack Smith, Richard Helms as Director oj
Central Intelligence: 7 Pdd-7P7J( Washington, DC: CIA
History Staff, 1993), p. 142. For NSA being placed on
alert, see Gerhard and Millington, Attack, p. 4.

45. Letter, Carroll to Helms, August 28, 1967, CREST

Collection, Document No. CIA-RDP79
B00972A000100070003-1, NA, CP; SC No. 10088/67,
memorandum, Large-Scale Soviet Military Exercise
[deleted], undated but circa late August 1967, CREST
Collection, Document No. CIA-

RDP79B00972A000100070001-3, NA, CP; TCS
95801/75, K. F. Spielmann Jr., The Evolution of Soviet
Strategic Command and Control and Warning, 1945-
72(Washington, DC: Institute for Defense Analysis,
1975), p. 271, National Security Archive, Washington,
DC.

46. Robert E. Newton, The Capture of the USS Pueblo
and Its Effect on SIGINT Operations, vol. 7 Special
Series, Crisis Collection (Fort Meade: Center for
Cryptologic History, 1992), p. 11, DOCID 3075778, NSA
FOIA; U.S. House of Representatives, Armed Services
Committee, Hearings Regarding Inquiry into the U.S.S.
Pueblo and EC-121 Incidents, 91st Congress, 1st session,
1969, p. 636; U.S. House of Representatives, Armed
Services Committee, H.A.S.C. No. 91-12, Report oj
Inquiry into the U.S.S. Pueblo and EC-121 Plane
Incidents, 91st Congress, 1st session, 1969, pp. 1632-33;
Trevor Armbrister, A Matter of Accountability: The True
Story of the Pueblo Affairl^Aossf York: Coward-McCann,
1970), pp. 82-85.

47. Newton, USS Pueblo, p. 12; historical fact sheet, USS
Banner (AGER-1), Ships Histories Division, Naval
Historical Center, Washington, DC. For a description of
the Sod Hut, see Dan Hearn, “A Career Built on
SIGINT,” American Intelligence Journal, Spring/Summer
1994: p. 68. “Least unsuitable” quote from Armbrister,
Matter of Accountability, pp. 85-86.

48. Commander-in-Chief, Pacific, CINCPAC Command
History 1966, vol. 1, pp. 89-90; Commander-in-Chief,
Pacific, CINCPAC Command History 1968, vol. 4, pp.
230-31, sanitized copies of both at U.S. Army Center of
Military History, Washington, DC; Packard, U.S. Naval
Intelligence, p. 115; Vice Admiral Edwin B. Hooper,
USN (Ret.), Mobility, Support, Endurance: A Story oj
Naval Operational Logistics in the Vietnam War, 1965-
7 Washington, DC: Naval History Division, 1972),
pp. 220-21; Joseph F. Bouchard, “Use of Naval Force in
Crises: A Theory of Stratified Crisis Interaction,” vol. 1
(Ph. D. diss., Stamford University, 1989), p. 33F

49. U.S. House of Representatives, Armed Services
Committee, Hearings Regarding Inquiry into the U.S.S.
Pueblo and EC-121 Incidents, 91st Congress, 1st session,
1969, pp. 636-38; U.S. House of Representatives, Armed
Services Committee, H.A.S.C. No. 91-12, Report oJ
Inquiry into the U.S.S. Pueblo and EC-121 Plane
Incidents, 91st Congress, 1st session, 1969, pp. 1646- 49;

Hooper, Mobility, Support, Endurance, pp. 222-25.

50. The most detailed description of all aspects of the
USS Pueblo'^ mission and seizure by the North Koreans
can be found in Newton, USS Pueblo, p. 3. See also
Commander-in-Chief, Pacific, CINCPAC Command
History 1968, vol. 4, p. 229, Operational Archives, Naval
Historical Center, Washington, DC; Central Intelligence
Bulletin, January 23, 1968, p. 4, CIA Electronic FOIA
Reading Room, Document No. 0000265983,
http://www.foia.cia.gov .

51. U.S. House of Representatives, Armed Services
Committee, Hearings Regarding Inquiry into the U.S.S.
Pueblo and EC-121 Incidents, 91st Congress, 1st session,
1969, pp. 692, 698; U.S. House of Representatives,
Armed Services Committee, Report No. 91-12, Report oj
the Special Subcommittee on the U.S.S. Pueblo: Inquiry
into the U.S.S. Pueblo and EC-121 Incidents, 91st
Congress, 1st session, 1969, pp. 1654-56. CIA memo
quote from memorandum. Smith to Director of Central
Intelligence, JRC Monthly Reconnaissance Schedule for
January 1968, January 2, 1968, CIA Electronic FOIA
Reading Room, Document No. 0001458144,
http://www.foia.cia.gov .

52. CIA, The Pueblo Incident: Briefing Materials for
Ambassador Ball’s Committee, February 5, 1968, p. 1,
CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Document No.

0000267787, http://www.foia.cia.gov .

53. Letter, Goldberg to President of U.N. Security
Council, January 25, 1968, in Department of State
Bulletin, February 12, 1968, pp. 195-96.

54. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 439.

55. For TV pictures of the NS A documents, see Newton,
pp. 122-23; Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 448.
For the North Korean book containing NS A documents,
SQQ Les actes d’ agression declares de I’imperialisme U.S.

r

contre le peuple coree^(Pyongyang: Editions en Langues
Etrangeres, 1968).

56. CIA, Directorate of Intelligence, intelligence
memorandum, Pueblo Sitrep No. 14, January 28, 1968, p.
3, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Document No.
0000230614, http://www.foia.cia.gov : SC 13455/69,
memorandum, Clarke to Assistant Deputy Director for
Intelligence, Senator Russell ’s Remarks on Soviet
Exploitation of USS Pueblo, January 3, 1969, p. 3,
CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP79B00972A000100430001-3, NA, CP; confidential
interview.

57. For SIGINT sources drying up, see final draft, SIGINT
101 Seminar Course Module, 2002, NSA FOIA. For NSA
damage assessment, see “Notes of Meeting,” January 24,
1968, in U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations oj

the United States, 1964-1968, vol.
Arorea(Washington, DC: GPO, 1999).

29 ,

58. U.S. Army Military History Institute, Oral History 73-
2, Interview with General Charles H. Bonesteel III, USA
Retired, vol. 1, 1973, pp. 345-46, U.S. Army Center of
Military History, Washington, DC.

59. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, pp. 455-57; HQ

ASA, Historical Summary of the US. Army Security
Agency, FY 1968-1970, pp. 73-74, INSCOM FOIA; CIA,
memorandum, DCI Briefing for Congressional Leaders:
Soviet Troop Movements, August 23, 1968, p. Troops- 1,
CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Document No.
0000677561, http://www.foia.cia.gov : memorandum,
Hendrick-son to Chairman, Strategic Warning Working
Group, Rapid Readout and Reporting of Imagery for
Warning and Indications Intelligence Purposes,
September 26, 1969, p. 1, CREST Collection, Document
No. CIA-RDP79B01709A002200 100006-2, NA, CP;
CIA, Directorate of Intelligence, intelligence
memorandum, ESAU XLIV, Czechoslovakia: The
Problem of Soviet Control, January 16, 1970, p. 14, CIA
Electronic FOIA Reading Room,

http://www.foia.cia.gov /cpe.asp: James H. Polk,

“Reflections on the Czechoslovakian Invasion, 1968,”
Strategic Review, vol. 5, no. 5: p. 31; interview, James H.
Polk.

60. Confidential interviews. For an early example of the
material being produced by the Moscow listening post,
see CIA, The President’s Intelligence Checklist, October
18, 1962, p. 8, JFKL, Boston, MA.

61. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 473; oral
history. Interview with David J. Fischer, March 6, 1998,
Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection, Association for
Diplomatic Studies and Training, Library of Congress,
Washington, DC.

62. Memorandum, Taylor to Deputy Director for
Intelligence, Indications of Soviet Intent to Invade
Czechoslovakia, August 22, 1968, CREST Collection,
Document No. CIA-RDP79B00972A0 00100240004-1,
NA, CP; Memorandum, Karl to Smith, DDCI Memo on
Handling of Indications Traffic, August 23, 1968, CREST
Collection, Document No. CIA-RDP79B00972A000
100240003-2, NA, CP; memorandum, Hendrickson to
Chairman, Strategic Warning Working Group, Rapid
Readout and Reporting of Imagery for Warning and
Indications Intelligence Purposes, September 26, 1969, p.
1, CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP79B01709A002200 100006-2, NA, CP; Johnson,
American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 458.

63. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 459; Polk,
“Reflections on the Czechoslovakian Invasion, 1968,” p.

32; interview, General James H. Polk.

64. Robert J. Hanyok, Spartans in Darkness: American
SIGINT and the Indochina War, 1945-1975, U.S.
Cryptologic History, series 6, vol. 7 (Fort Meade, MD:
Center for Cryptologic History, 2002), pp. 156-60.

65. In April 1972, Washington Po^/^columnist Jack
Anderson revealed that NS A had been able to read the
most sensitive South Vietnamese military and diplomatic
communications for a number of years, for which see
Anderson, “U.S. Is Forced to Spy on Saigon,”
Washington Post, April 30, 1972; Seymour M. Hersh, The
Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White HouscQAqsn
York: Summit Books, 1983), p. 183n.

66. U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the
United States, 1964-1968, vol. 7, Vietnam: September
1968-January 7PdP(Washington, DC: GPO, 2003);
Daniel Schorr, “The Secret Nixon-LBJ War,” Washington
Post, May 28, 1995. See also Bui Diem with David
Chanoff, In the Jaws of History(Bo^Xorv. Houghton
Mifflin, 1987), p. 244.

67. Oral history. Interview with Arthur B. Krim, April 7,
1983, p. 22, Austin, TX.

68. For CIA taps on Thieu’s office, see Frank Snepp,
Decent IntervaKNQw York: Random House, 1977), pp.
15, 294; Thomas Powers, The Man Who Kept the Secrets:

Richard Helms and the CZ4(New York: Pocket Books,
1979), p. 252.

69. Memorandum, CIA to Rostow and Rusk, President
Thieu ’s Views Regarding the Issues Involved in Agreeing
to a Bombing Halt, October 26, 1968, p. 1, CIA
Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Document No.
0000576096, http://www.foia.cia.gov .

70. Memorandum, Rostow to President, October 29,
1968, p. 1, National Security File: Walt Rostow Files,
File: Richard Nixon — Vietnam, FBJF, Austin, TX.

71. H. R. Haldeman, The Haldeman Diaries: Inside the
Nixon White HouseQAQSM York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons,
1994), p. 567; Douglas Watson, “Houston Says NSA
Urged Break-Ins,” Washington Post, March 3, 1975;
transcript, Cartha D. “Deke” DeFoach Oral History
Interview 1, January 11, 1991, pp. 19-20, FBJF, Austin,
TX.

9: Tragedy and Triumph

F Dr. Thomas R. Johnson, American Cryptology During
the Cold War, 1 945-1 989(¥ort Meade, MD: Center for
Cryptologic History, 1995), bk. 2, Centralization Wins,
1960-1972, pp. 293, 297, NSA FOIA.

Z DCI Remarks to PFIAB, January 13, 1982, p. 1,
CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP84B00049R00 1102660009-2, NA, CP; Dr. Thomas

R. Johnson, American Cryptology During the Cold War,
1945-1 98 9(¥oYt Meade, MD: Center for Cryptologic
History, 1995), bk. 3, Retrenchment and Reform, 1972-
21,NSA FOIA.

3^ HQ ASA, Annual Historical Summary of the U.S. Army
Security Agency, FY 197 f p. 61, INSCOM FOIA; HQ
ASA, Annual Historical Summary of the U.S. Army
Security Agency, FY 1972, p. 47, INSCOM FOIA; “U.S.
Electronic Espionage: A Memoir,” Ramparts, August
1972, p. 50; Tad Szulc, “The NSA — America’s $10
Billion Frankenstein,” Penthouse, November 1975, p.
194.

4, Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 3, p. vii.

^ U.S. House of Representatives, Select Committee on
Intelligence, U.S. Intelligence Agencies and Activities:
The Performance of the Intelligence Community, 94th
Congress, 2nd session, part 2, 1975, p. 646; Seymour M.
Hersh, The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White
House(HQw York: Summit Books, 1983), p. 207.

C Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 3, p. 487.

T The official NSA history of this incident can be found
in Thomas P. Ziehm, The National Security Agency and
the EC-121 Shootdown, vol. 3, Special Series, Crisis
Collection (Fort Meade: Center for Cryptologic History,
1989), NSA FOIA. See also Fleet Air Reconnaissance

Squadron One, Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron One
1969 Command History, 1970, p. 7, Navy FOIA; Capt.
Don East, USN, “A History of U.S. Navy Fleet Air
Reconnaissance: Part One, the Pacific and VQ-1,” Hook,
Spring 1987: pp. 29-30; CTMCM Jay R. Brown,
“Kamiseya Update P-2,” NCVA Cryptolog, Spring 1995:
p. 23; “ELINT Techniques ‘Pirate’ Radar Oditdi,'' Aviation
Week & Space Technology, February 21, 1972, p. 40.

L U.S. House of Representatives, Armed Services
Committee, HASC No. 91-12, Report of the Special
Subcommittee on the USS Pueblo: Inquiry into the U.S.S.
Pueblo and EC-121 Plane Incidents, 91st Congress, 1st
session, July 28, 1969, pp. 1675, 1680.

9^ Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 466.

10. James E. Pierson, USAFSS Response to World Crises,
1 949-1 969{Sdin Antonio, TX: USAFSS Historical Office,
1970), p. 35, AIA FOIA; Johnson, American Cryptology,
bk. 2, p. 466.

11. Seymour M. Hersh, The Price of Power: Kissinger in
the Nixon White HouscINqw York: Summit Books, 1983),
pp. 69-1 tl, 73-74; confidential interview.

12. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. All .

13. Memorandum with attachments, Hughes to President,
July 16, 1969, p. 1, Nixon Presidential Materials, White

House Central Files/Subject Files, box 7, file FG 13-11/A
NSA (7/16/69), NA, CP; “Vice Admiral Noel Gayler,
USN Becomes Agency’s New Director,” NSA Newsletter,
August 1969, p. 3, NSA FOIA.

14. Hersh, Price of Power, p. 208.

15. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 478.

16. Confidential interviews.

17. Loch K. Johnson, A Season of Inquiry: Congress and
Intelligence(Chic^go’. Dorsey Press, 1988), p. 83.

18. Mike Frost and Michel Gratton, Spyworld(T oronto:
Doubleday Canada, 1994), pp. 45-76.

19. See, for example, CIA, Directorate of Intelligence,

intelligence report. The Politburo and Soviet Decision
Making, April 1972, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading
Room, Document No. 0001024724,

http://www.foia.cia.gov : CIA, Directorate of Intelligence,
The SALT I Agreements and Future Soviet Weapons
Programs: A Framework for Analyzing Soviet
Decisionmaking, October 1972, CIA Electronic FOIA
Reading Room, Document No. 0000969878,
http://www.foia.cia.gov .

20. John M. McConnell, “The Evolution of Intelligence
and the Public Policy Debate on Encryption,” p. 151,

Seminar on Intelligence, Command and Control, Center
for Information Policy Research, Harvard University
School of Government, January 1997.

21. Jack Anderson, “CIA Eavesdrops on Kremlin Chiefs,”
Washington Post, September 16, 1971; McConnell, “The
Evolution of Intelligence and the Public Policy Debate on
Encryption.”

22. Memorandum, Kissinger to President, Moscow
Politics and Brezhnev’s Position, May 22, 1972,
Secret/Sensitive, Nixon Presidential Materials, NA, CP.

23. Hersh, Price of Power, p. 547; David Kahn, “Big Ear
or Big Brother?,” New York Times Magazine, May 16,
1976, p. 62; “Eavesdropping on the World’s Secrets,”
U.S. News & World Report, June 26, 1978, p. 47; Walter
Andrews, “Kissinger Allegedly Withheld Soviet Plan to
Violate SALT I,” Washington Times, April 6, 1984; Bill
Gertz, “CIA Upset Because Perle Detailed
Eavesdropping,” Washington Times, April 19, 1987.

24. NIO IIM 76-030J, interagency intelligence
memorandum. Implications for US-Soviet Relations oj
Certain Soviet Activities, June 1976, p. 7, CIA Electronic
FOIA Reading Room, Document No. 0000283807,
http://www.foia.cia.gov . See also “The Microwave
Furor,” Time, March 22, 1976.

25. Memorandum with attachments, Scowcroft to

President, Nixon Presidential Materials, White House
Central Files/Subject Files, box 7, file FG 13-11/A NSA
(7/24/72), NA, CP; “Lt. Gen. Samuel C. Phillips, USAF
Becomes Agency’s Seventh Director,” NSA Newsletter,
June 1972, p. 4, NSA FOIA.

26. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 3, p. 89, NSA
FOIA.

27. Interviews with Walter G. Deeley and Charles R.
Lord; NSA OH-09-97, oral history. Interview with Bobby
Ray Inman, June 18, 1997, p. 12, NSA FOIA.

28. Allen background from biographical data sheet, Lt.
General Lew Allen, Jr., U.S. Air Force Office of Public
Affairs.

29. Poker-face comments from confidential interview.
Snider quote from L. Britt Snider, “Unlucky Shamrock:
Recollections from the Church Committee’s Investigation
of NSA,” Studies in Intelligence, Winter 1999-2000,
unclassified ed.: p. 44.

30. U.S. Senate, Hearings Before the Select Committee to
Study Governmental Operations with Respect to
Intelligence Activities, 94th Congress, 1st session, vol. 6,
pp. 4-46.

31. For details of the missions and capabilities of these
SIGINT satellite systems, see Christopher Anson Pike,

“Canyon, Rhyolite and Aquacade: U.S. Signals
Intelligence Satellites in the 1970s,” Spaceflight, vol. 37
(November 1995): p. 381; Jonathan McDowell, “U.S.
Reconnaissance Satellite Programs, Part 2, Beyond
Imaging,” Quest, vol. 4, no. 4 (1995): p. 42; Major A.
Andronov, “American Geosynchronous SIGINT
Satellites,” Zarubezhnoye Voyennoye Obozreniye, no. 12
(1993): pp. 37^3. For NSA’s emphasis on SIGINT
collection from space in the 1970s, see William E. Odom,
Fixing Intelligence for a More Secure AmericaifSQSN
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), p. 120; Loch K.
Johnson, Secret Agencies: U.S. Intelligence in a Hostile
/Tor/(7(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), p.
178.

32. William Drozdiak, “A Suspicious Eye on U.S. ‘Big
Ears’: Europeans Fear Listening Posts Eavesdrop on
Their Businesses,” Washington Post, July 24, 2000.

33. A description of the mission and capabilities of the
Rhyolite satellite can be found in Pike, “Canyon, Rhyolite
and Aquacade,” pp. 381-82; McDowell, “U.S.
Reconnaissance Satellite Programs, Part 2,” 1995, p. 42;
Angelo Codevilla, Informing Statecraft: Intelligence for a
New CenturylfSQSM York: Free Press, 1992), pp. 115-16.
Wheelon quote from Albert D. Wheelon, “Technology
and Intelligence,” Technology and Society, January 2004,
pp. 4-5.

34. U.S. Pacific Fleet, Command History of the
Commander in Chief U.S. Pacific Fleet: CY 1979, 1980,
p. 32, CINCPACFLT FOIA; Jeffrey T. Richelson, The
U.S. Intelligence Community, 3rd ed. (Boulder, CO:
Westview Press, 1995), pp. 204-05; Ivan Amato, Pushing
the //onzo^(Washington, DC: GPO, 1998), p. 202;
Anthony Kenden, “U.S. Reconnaissance Satellite
Programs,” Space-flight, vol. 20, no. 7 (1978): pp. 257-
58; Philip J. Klass, “Aircraft Ocean Surveillance Role
Studied,” Aviation Week & Space Technology, May 8,
1972, p. 26; “Navy Ocean Surveillance Satellite
Depicted,” Aviation Week & Space Technology, May 24,
1976, p. 25; “Expanded Ocean Surveillance Effort Set,”
Aviation Week & Space Technology, July 10, 1978, pp.
22-23; “NASA Souvenir Spills Navy Satellite Secrets,”
Aviation Week & Space Technology, October 22, 1984, p.
20; Major A. Andronov, “The U.S. Navy’s ‘White Cloud’
Spacebome ELINT System,” Zarubezhnoye Voyen-noye
Obozreniye, no. 7, 1993: pp. 57-60.

35. Christopher Ford and David Rosenberg, The
Admiral’s Advantage: U.S. Navy Operational Intelligence
in World War II and the Cold m7r( Annapolis, MD: Naval
Institute Press, 2005), p. 62.

36. U.S. Senate, Final Report of the Select Committee to
Study Governmental Operations with Respect to
Intelligence Activities, 94th Congress, 2nd session, bk. 1,

1976, p. 85; CIA: The Pike Report(hoYiAon\ Spokesman
Books, 1977), p. 141.

37. United States European Command, Historical Report

1973, 1974, p. 295, National Security Archive,

Washington, DC; U.S. House of Representatives, Select
Committee on Intelligence, U.S. Intelligence Agencies
and Activities: The performance of the Intelligence
Community, 94th Congress, 2nd session, part 2, 1975, pp.
678-81; William Colby and Peter Forbath, Honorable
Me^(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978), pp. 434-35;
confidential interviews.

38. TS 204127, memorandum. Proficiency of Egyptian
Air Force and Air Defense Personnel, July 13, 1973,
CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP75B00380R000200050087-4, NA, CP.

39. Memorandum, National Security Council Staff to
Kissinger, Indications of Arab Intentions to Initiate
Hostilities, circa May 1973, Nixon Presidential Materials
Project, Henry Kissinger Office Files, box 135, file
Rabin/Kissinger (Dinitz) 1973 Jan- July (2 of 3), NA, CP;
Intelligence Community Staff, The performance of the
Intelligence Community Before the Arab-Israeli War oj
October 1973: A Preliminary Post-Mortem Report,
December 1973, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room,
Document No. 0001331429, http://www.foia.cia.gov :
U.S. House of Representatives, Select Committee on

Intelligence, U.S. Intelligence Agencies and Activities:
The Performance of the Intelligence Community, 94th
Congress, 1st session, part 2, 1975, pp. 658-59, 680-81;
Pike Report, pp. 143, 147; Marvin L. Kalb and Bernard
Kalb, KissingerlBo^ion: Little, Brown, 1974), p. 454;
Henry Kissinger, Years of UpheavaliBo^ion: Little,
Brown, 1982), p. 475; Daniel O. Graham, Confessions oj
a Cold Warriorlfwidos, VA: Preview Press, 1995), p. 77;
“Eavesdropping,” U.S. News & World Report, p. 47.

40. Intelligence Community Staff, The performance of the

Intelligence Community Before the Arab- Israeli War oj
October 1973: A Preliminary Post-Mortem Report,
December 1973, p. i, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading
Room, Document No. 0001331429,

http://www.foia.cia.gov : U.S. House of Representatives,
Select Committee on Intelligence, U.S. Intelligence
Agencies and Activities: The Performance of the
Intelligence Community, 94th Congress, 1st session, part
2, 1975, pp. 658-59, Pike Report, 143, 147.

41. Norman Klar, Confessions of a Code Breaker (Tales

from (privately published, 2004), p. 280.

42. Intelligence Community Staff, The Performance oj

the Intelligence Community Before the Arab-Israeli War
of October 1973: A Preliminary Post-Mortem Report,
December 1973, p. i, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading
Room, Document No. 000133 1429,

http://www.foia.cia.gov : Richard W. Shyrock, “The
Intelligence Community Post-Mortem Program, 1973-
1975,” Studies in Intelligence, RG-263, NA, CP.

43. U.S. House of Representatives, Select Committee on
Intelligence, U.S. Intelligence Agencies and Activities:
The performance of the Intelligence Community, 94th
Congress, 1st session, part 2, 1975, pp. 658-59, 680-81;
Pike Report, pp. 143, 147.

44. Allen quote from Douglas F. Garthoff, Directors oj
Central Intelligence as Leaders of the U.S. Intelligence
Community: 7P4d-2^^5(Washington, DC: Center for the
Study of Intelligence, 2005), pp. 117-18.

45. Klar’s background from Klar, ConfessionsfTi^
obituary, Washington Post, April 4, 2005.

46. Klar, Confessions, pp. 279-80; interview with
Norman Klar.

47. For Nixon’s 1972 order for SIGINT coverage of
terrorism, see U.S. Department of Justice, Report on
Inquiry into CIA-Related Electronic Surveillance
Activities, June 30, 1976, p. 31. For SIGINT successes,
see Robert J. Many ok, “The First Round: NSA’s Efforts
Against International Terrorism in the 1970s,”
Cryptologic Almanac, November-December 2002, NSA
FOIA; Klar, Confessions, p. 289. For monitoring Arafat,
see, for example, memorandum, Palestinian Involvement

in US-Iranian Dispute, November 21, 1979, p. 1, CREST
Collection, Document No. CIA-

RDP81B00401R000500130031-2, NA, CP.

48. “Angola: After Independence,” in CIA, Weekly
Review, November 21, 1975, pp. 2-3, CIA Electronic
FOIA Reading Room, Document No. 0000126975,
http://www.foia.cia.gov : U.S. Intelligence Board,

National Intelligence Bulletin, November 26, 1975, p. 12,
CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Document No.
0000098693, http://www.foia.cia.gov : NIO IIM 76-004C,
interagency intelligence memorandum, Soviet and Cuban
Aid to the MPLA in Angola from March Through
December 1975, January 24, 1976, p. i, CIA Electronic
FOIA Reading Room, Document No. 0000681964,
http://www.foia.cia.gov : interagency intelligence

memorandum, Soviet and Cuban Aid to the MPLA in
Angola During January 1976, February 3, 1976, p. 3, CIA
Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Document No.
0000307945, http://www.foia.cia.gov : interagency

intelligence memorandum, Soviet and Cuban Aid to the
MPLA in Angola During February 1976, March 26, 1976,
pp. 2-A, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Document
No. 0000681967, http://www.foia.cia.gov : CIA,

Directorate of Intelligence, Soviet and Cuban Intervention
in the Angolan Civil War, March 1977, p. 22, CIA FOIA
Electronic Reading Room, http://www.foia.cia.gov : CIA,
National Foreign Assessment Center, The Cuban Military

Establishment, April 1979, pp. 1-3, CREST Collection,
Document No. CIA-RDP80T00942A000900030001-2,
NA, CP.

49. CIA, The Situation in Lebanon, March 30, 1976,
CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP85T00353R000100260020-6, NA, CP; George Bush,
memorandum for the record, April 10, 1976, CIA
Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Document No.
0000191281, http://www.foia.cia.gov : NIO IIM 76-015,
interagency intelligence memorandum, Israeli-Syrian
Hostilities, April 12, 1976, CIA FOIA; CIA, SC No.
07362/76, intelligence memorandum, Lebanon
Evacuation Situation Report No. 2, June 18, 1976,
CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP83M00171R001800080031-7, NA, CP.

50. ASA Detachment, Southern Command, Annual
Historical Report, USASA Detachment, Southern
Command Fiscal Year 1975, 1976, p. 1 passim, INSCOM
FOIA; 408th ASA Company (Brigade Support), Annual
Historical Report, 408th Army Security Agency Company
(Brigade Support), Fiscal Year 1975, 1976, pp. I, 5,
INSCOM FOIA.

5 1 . Confidential interview.

52. HQ 470th Military Intelligence Group, Historical
Report Annual Supplement: 1 October 1977-30

September 1978, appendix T, DCI Letter of
Commendation, INSCOM FOIA; John Dinges, Our Man
in PanamaQSQ^ York: Random House, 1990), pp. 81-83;
Manuel Noriega and Peter Eis-ner, America's Prisoner:
The Memoirs of Manuel Aonega(New York: Random
House, 1997), p. 60; Seymour M. Hersh, “Panama
Strongman Said to Trade in Drugs, Arms and Illicit
Money,” New York Times, June 12, 1986; Stephen
Engelberg and Jeff Gerth, “Bush and Noriega: Their 20-
Year Relationship,” New York Times, September 28,
1988; Congressional Record — Senate, February 21, 1978,
p. 3972. For Travis Trophy going to the 470th Military
Intelligence Group, see NSA Newsletter, October 1978, p.
6, NSA FOIA.

53. OSP-13-76T, polygraph examination report,
November 10, 1976; File No. ZG000265, report of
investigation, February 14, 1977, both in Canton Song 1
dossier, INSCOM FOIA. The army investigation into
what was described as the “Singing Sergeants” case was
first brought to public light in Hersh, “Panama
Strongman.”

54. OSP-13-76T, polygraph examination report,
November 10, 1976; witness statement, November 11,

1976, both in Canton Song 1 dossier, INSCOM FOIA;
File CE 76-245-03, report of investigation, December 7,

1977, Canton Song 2 dossier, INSCOM FOIA.

55. Engelberg and Gerth, “Bush and Noriega.” See also
Dinges, Our Man in Panama, pp. 83-84; Frederick
Kempe, Divorcing the Dictator: America 's Bungled
Affair with NoriegaQAQVJ York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons,
1990), p. 28.

56. For congressional oversight committees being briefed
on the case and asked not to do anything, see
Congressional Record — Senate, February 21, 1978, p.
3972.

57. Inman background from NS A OH-09-97, oral history.
Interview with Bobby Ray Inman, June 18, 1997, NSA
FOIA; biographical data sheet. Vice Admiral Bobby Ray
Inman, U.S. Navy Office of Public Affairs.

58. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 2, p. 190.

59. Confidential interviews.

60. Memorandum, Requirements & Evaluation Staff to

Assistant Comptroller, Requirements &Evaluation, The
CIA/NSA Relationship, August 20, 1976, CREST

Collection, Document No. CIA-

RDP79M00467A002400030009-4, NA, CP.

61. For NSA’s $1.3 billion budget, see memorandum,
[deleted] to C/M&AS, Annual Defense Report, March 8,
1977, p. 275, CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-

RDP80-00473A000600 1000 11-7, NA, CP. See also
Elaine Sciolino, “An Operator for the Pentagon,” New
York Times, December 17, 1993; Barton Gellman and
Bob Woodward, “Analyst with a Nonpartisan Touch,”
Washington Post, December 17, 1993.

62. NS A OH-09-97, oral history. Interview with Bobby
Ray Inman, June 18, 1997, p. 18, NSA FOIA.

63. James G. Hudec, “Provision of Cryptologic
Information to the Congress,” Cryptologic Spectrum, vol.
11, no. 3 (Summer 1981): pp. 12-13, NSA FOIA.

64. NSC, Report on Presidential Review
Memorandum/NSC-1 1 : Intelligence Structure and
Mission, February 23, 1977, p. 15, Department of State
FOIA; memorandum, [deleted] to [deleted]. Intelligence
Community Deficiencies — PRM-11, February 28, 1977,
CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP79M00095A000100030020-9, NA, CP; DCI/IC 77-
4657, Intelligence Community Staff, 1977 Director of
Central Intelligence Report on the Intelligence
Community, March 1977, pp. 23-24, CREST Collection,
Document No. CIA-RDP83M00 1 7 1R002 1001 10007-6,
NA, CP.

65. Memorandum, [deleted] to C/M&AS, Annual Defense
Report, March 8, 1977, pp. 216-11 , CREST Collection,
Document No. CIA-RDP80-00473 A000600 100011 -7,

NA, CP; memorandum, Vice Admiral Bobby R. Inman,
USN, to Special Assistant, Office of the Secretary of
Defense, Transition Coordination, December 9, 1980, p.
4, via Dr. Jeffrey T. Richelson; Bob Woodward, Veil: The
Secret Wars of the CIA, 1981-1987 (Hqs^ York: Simon
and Schuster, 1987), pp. 71-72.

66. Foreword of Admiral Stansfield Turner, USN (Ret.),
to David D. Newsom, The Soviet Brigade in Cuba: A
Study in Po litical Diplomacy(B\oommgion’. Indiana
University Press, 1987), p. ix.

67. Memorandum, Vice Admiral Bobby R. Inman, USN,

to Special Assistant, Office of the Secretary of Defense,
Transition Coordination, December 9, 1980, sec. 8,
Modernization Objectives; Johnson, American
Cryptology, bk. 3, pp. 196-97, NSA FOIA. For NS A
opposition to APEX, see memorandum, SA to the DCI for
Compartmentation to Director of Central Intelligence,
APEX— NSA Issue Paper, December 2, 1980, CREST
Collection, Document No. CIA-RDP85T00788
ROOO 100 150003-5, NA, CP; memorandum, SA to the
DCI for Compartmentation to Director of Central
Intelligence, APEX— Navy Issue Paper, December 3,
1980, CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP85T00788R000100150002-8, NA, CP;

memorandum. Chairman, DCI Committee on
Compartmentation, to Deputy Director of Central

Intelligence, DCI Committee on Compartmentation Final
Report, July 27, 1981, CREST Collection, Document No.
CIA-RDP85T00788 ROOO 100070023-2, NA, CP.

68. Confidential interview.

69. Mark Urban, UK Eyes Alpha(London’. Faber and
Faber, 1996), p. 6; confidential interviews.

70. Memorandum, Fevi to the President, January 6, 1976,
p. 1, DDRS; Jack Anderson, “Project Aquarian: Tapping
the Tappers,” Washington Post, December 2, 1980.

71. Prime was released from prison in March 2001. For
Prime’s background and details of his espionage on behalf
of the USSR, see D. J. Cole, Geoffrey Prime: The
Imperfect iS/?y(Fondon: Robert Hale, 1998); Richard J.
Aldrich, “GCHQ and Sigint in Early Cold War, 1945-
1970,” in Matthew M. Aid and Cees Wiebes, eds.. Secrets
of Signals Intelligence During the Cold War and
Beyond(Londorv. Frank Cass, 2001), pp. 91-92. For
damage done by Prime, see Urban, UK Eyes Alpha, p. 6;
Philip Taubman, “U.S. Aides Say British Spy Gave
Soviet Key Data,” New York Times, October 24, 1982;
Jon Nordheimer, “British Spy Hurt the U.S., Mrs.
Thatcher Declares,” New York Times, November 12,
1982.

72. Defense Panel on Intelligence, Report of the Defense
Panel on Intelligence, January 1975, p. 8, partially

declassified and obtained by FOIA, by National Security
Archive, Washington, DC; Commission on the
Organization of the Government for the Conduct of
Foreign Policy (“Murphy Commission”), Report of the
Commission on the Organization of the Government for
the Conduct of Foreign Policy, vol. 7 (Washington, DC:
GPO, 1975), p. 26; CIA, Intelligence Community
Experiment in Competitive Analysis: Soviet Strategic
Objectives: An Alternative View: Report of Team
December 1976, p. 9, RG-263, NA, CP.

73. Richard Pearson, “Computer Pioneer Seymour Cray
Dies,” Washington Post, October 6, 1996.

74. Castro background from biographical data sheet,

Lawrence Castro, NS A Coordinator for Homeland
Security Support,

http://www.itoc.usma.edu/workshop/2002/documents/Cas1

75. William R. Corson, Susan B. Trento, and Joseph J.
Trento, lF/(7ow^(New York: Crown Publishers, 1989), p.
94.

76. Memorandum, Director, Program Assessment Office,
to Assistant Deputy Director for Operations, National
Security Agency, Project HOOFBEAT, August 26, 1980,
p. 1, CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP83M00171R001 100150001-9, NA, CP.

77. Examples of SIGINT reporting on Iran after the

February 1979 revolution can be found in CIA, National
Foreign Assessment Center, memorandum. Status of
Iranian Armed Forces, November 7, 1979, CREST
Collection, Document No. CIA-

RDP81B00401R000500030017-9, NA, CP; CIA,

memorandum. Impact of US Severance of Diplomatic Ties
with Iran, November 30, 1979, CREST Collection,
Document No. CIA-RDP8 1 B0040 1 R000500 1 3 0030-3 ,
NA, CP; CIA, National Foreign Assessment Center,
memorandum, Iranian Military Readiness, December 7,
1979, CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-

RDP81B00401R000500030012-4, NA, CP; CIA,

memorandum. Current Situation in Iran, December 31,

1979, CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-

RDP81B00401R000500100019-9, NA, CP; CIA,

National Foreign Assessment Center, memorandum, Iran:
Growing Leftist Influence Among Minorities, January

1980, CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-

RDP81B00401R000500160018-4, NA, CP; CIA,

National Foreign Assessment Center, memorandum, Iran:
Decline in Air Force Capability, May 1980, CREST
Collection, Document No. CIA-

RDP81B00401R000500030011-5, NA, CP. For Rhyolite
satellite collection on Iran, confidential interviews.

78. CIA, The Vietnam-Cambodia Conflict, March 8, 1978,
CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Document No.
0000690153, http://www.foia.cia.gov : Johnson, American

Cryptology, bk. 3, p. 255.

79. CIA, Alert Memorandum: China-Vietnam, January 5,
1979, pp. 1-2, CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP81B00080R00 14000 10002-4, NA, CP.

80. CIA, NSC briefing, Indochina: China/Vietnam,

February 18, 1979, CREST Collection, Document No.
CIA-RDP83B00100R000100030014-8, NA, CP; CIA,
Strategic Warning Staff, Monthly Report to the Director
of Central Intelligence, March 29, 1979, CIA Electronic
FOIA Reading Room, Document No. 0000789481,
http://www.foia.cia.gov : CIA, National Foreign

Assessment Center, The Sino- Vietnamese Border Dispute,
April 1979, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room,
Document No. 0000789482, http://www.foia.cia.gov . See
also Brian Toohey and Marian Wilkinson, The Book oj
LeaksiSydnoy: Angus and Robertson Publishers, 1989), p.
134; Rear Admiral James B. Linder, USN (Ret.), and Dr.
A. James Gregor, “The Chinese Communist Air Force in
the ‘Punitive’ War Against Vietnam,” Air University
Review, vol. 32, no. 6 (September/ October 1981): p. 77.

81. Toohey and Wilkinson, Book of Leaks, pp. 134-35;
Desmond Ball, “Over and Out: Signals Intelligence in
Hong Kong,” Intelligence and National Security, vol. 11,
no. 3 (July 1996): pp. 479-80.

82. Confidential interviews with former NS A officials;

Gloria Duffy, “Crisis Mangling and the Cuban Brigade,”
International Security, vol. 18, no. 1 (Summer 1983): p.
71. For navy SIGINT aircraft operating from Guantanamo
and Florida, see U.S. Sixth Fleet, 1979 Sixth Fleet
Command History, p. III-7; U.S. Sixth Fleet, 1980 Sixth
Fleet Command History, p. III-6, both in Operational
Archives, Naval Historical Center, Washington, DC.

83. Confidential interviews. See also Raymond Bonner,
Weakness and Deceit: U.S. Policy and El Salvador(HQyN
York: Times Books, 1984), p. 263.

84. David Binder, “Soviet Brigade: How the U.S. Traced
It,'' New York Times, September 13, 1979.

85. Memorandum, Brzezinski to President, NSC Weekly
Report #98, May 25, 1979, p. 1, NSC Files, Jimmy Carter
Presidential Library, Atlanta, GA.

86. CIA, interagency intelligence memorandum.
Memorandum to Holders, Updated Report on Soviet
Ground Forces Brigade in Cuba, September 18, 1979, p.
2, RG-263, entry 82, box 33, MORI DocID: 14459, NA,
CP; Stansfield Turner, Secrecy and Democracy: The CIA
in TransitionQSQw York: Harper and Row Publishers,
1985), pp. 230-31; Robert M. Gates, From the
ShadowsQSQSM York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), p. 155;
Don Oberdorfer, “Chapter I: ‘Brigada’: Unwelcome Sight
in Cuba,” Washington Post, September 9, 1979; Binder,

“Soviet Brigade,” New York Times.

87. Newsom, Soviet Brigade in Cuba, pp. vii-xii.

88. CIA, interagency intelligence memorandum.
Memorandum to Holders, Updated Report on Soviet
Ground Forces Brigade in Cuba, September 18, 1979, pp.
2-4, RG-263, entry 82 (Al), box 33, MORI DocID:
14459, NA, CP; White Paper on the Presence of Soviet
Troops in Cuba, September 28, 1979, pp. 2-3, NSC Files,
Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, GA.

89. Memorandum, PB/NSC Coordinator to Director of
Central Intelligence, “Leak” on Soviet Brigade, October
5, 1979, CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP81B00401R002400 1000 10-7, NA, CP.

90. For an excellent monograph on the U.S. intelligence

community’s coverage of events leading up to the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan, see Douglas J. MacEachin,
Predicting the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan: The
Intelligence Community's Washington, DC:

Center for the Study of Intelligence, April 2002).
MacEachin served as the CIA’s deputy director for
intelligence from 1993 to 1995.

91. TCS 3267-79, interagency intelligence memorandum,
Soviet Options in Afghanistan, September 27, 1979, p. 6,
CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Document No.
0000267105, http://www.foia.cia.gov .

92. CIA, interagency intelligence memorandum, The
Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan: Implications for Warning,
October 1980, p. 9, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room,
Document No. 0000278538, http://www.foia.cia.gov .

93. TCS 3267-79, interagency intelligence memorandum,
Soviet Options in Afghanistan, September 27, 1979, pp.
6-7, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Document No.
0000267105, http://www.foia.cia.gov : CIA, interagency
intelligence memorandum. The Soviet Invasion oj
Afghanistan: Implications for Warning, October 1980, pp.
10, 13, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Document
No. 0000278538, http://www.foia.cia.gov : Johnson,
American Cryptology, bk. 3, p. 252; MacEachin,
Predicting the Soviet Invasion, p. 13.

94. CIA, interagency intelligence memorandum. The

Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan: Implications for Warning,
October 1980, pp. 17-19, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading
Room, Document No. 0000278538,

http://www.foia.cia.gov : MacEachin, Predicting the
Soviet Invasion, 19-20.

95. Memorandum, Turner to National Security Council,
Alert Memorandum on USSR- Afghanistan, September 14,
1979, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Document
No. 0000267104, http://www.foia.cia.gov .

96. CIA, interagency intelligence memorandum. The

Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan: Implications for Warning,
October 1980, pp. 19-20, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading
Room, Document No. 0000278538,

http://www.foia.cia.gov : MacEachin, Predicting the
Soviet Invasion, p. 2E

97. Lt. General William J McCaffrey, USA (Ret.), A
Review of Intelligence Performance in Afghanistan, April
9, 1984, p. 8, CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP86B00269R001 100100003-5, NA, CP.

98. Ibid., p. 9.

99. CIA, DDCI Notes, January 2, 1980, CREST
Collection, Document No. CIA-RDP81B00401R00
0600230018-5, NA, CP; Lt. General William J
McCaffrey, USA (Ret.), A Review of Intelligence
Performance in Afghanistan, April 9, 1984, p. 10, CREST
Collection, Document No. CIA-RDP86
B00269R001 100100003-5, NA, CP; Willis C. Armstrong
et al., “The Hazards of Single-Outcome Forecasting,” in
H. Bradford Westerfield, ed.. Inside the CIA 's Private
World(NQSN Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), p.
254; Gates, From the Shadows, p. 133; MacEachin,
Predicting the Soviet Invasion, p. 33.

100. CIA, Afghan Task Force, intelligence memorandum.
The Buildup of Soviet Forces in Afghanistan Since 29
November, December 28, 1979, CREST Collection,

Document No. CIA-RDP81B00 401R000600230019-4,
NA, CP; CIA, DDCI Notes, January 2, 1980, p. 2, CREST
Collection, Document No. CIA-

RDP81B00401R000600230018-5, NA, CP; Lt. General
William J McCaffrey, USA (Ret.), A Review oj
Intelligence Performance in Afghanistan, April 9, 1984,
p. 11, CREST Collection, Document No. CIA-
RDP86B00269R001 100100003-5, NA, CP. For the
Russian perspective, see Valerie I. Ablazov, “VVS
Sovetskoy Armii v perviy god voiny,” undated,
http://www.airwar.ru/history/locwar/afgan/vvs/vvs.html.

101. CIA, interagency intelligence memorandum. The
Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan: Implications for Warning,
October 1980, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room,
Document No. 0000278538, http://www.foia.cia.gov .

102. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 3, p. 254.

103. “CRYPTOLOG Interviews NS A Employee Gene
Becker,” Cryptolog, Spring 1996: p. 19.

104. Johnson, American Cryptology, bk. 3, p. vii.

10: Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano

E “Gen. Faurer Named as NS A Director,” Washington
Post, March 11, 1981; “Director Completes Distinguished
Career,” NSA Newsletter, April 1985, p. 3, NSA FOIA.

Z NSA OH-09-97, oral history. Interview with Bobby Ray

Inman, June 18, 1997, p. 5, NSA FOIA; interview with
Charles R. Lord; confidential interviews.

L National Cryptologic School, On Watch: Profiles from
the National Security Agency's Past 40 Years(fori
Meade, MD: NSA/CSS, 1986), p. 91, NSA FOIA.

A Bob Woodward, Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA,
1981-1987 (Hqs^ York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), p. 88;
H. D. S. Greenway and Paul Quinn- Judge, “CIA Chief
Voices Final Hopes and Fears,” Boston Globe, January
15, 1993; confidential interviews.

^ CIA, interagency intelligence assessment.
Ramifications of Planned US Naval Exercise in the GulJ
of Sidra: 18-20 August 1981, August 10, 1981, p. 1,
DDRS.

C 1981 Command History, USS Caron, pp. 1-3, Ships
Histories Division, Naval Historical Center, Washington,
DC; David C. Martin and John Walcott, Best Laid
PlansiNossf York: Harper and Row, 1988), p. 72; Daniel
P. Bolger, Americans at /H 2 r(Novato, CA: Presidio Press,
1988), p. 179.

T Confidential interviews; Jay Peterzell, Reagan 's Secret
Washington, DC: Center for National Security
Studies, 1984), p. 69; Woodward, Veil, pp. 165-67, 409;
Martin and Walcott, Best LaidPXdin^, pp. 72-73.

L Raymond Bonner, Weakness and Deceit: U.S. Policy
and El Salvador(HQSM York: Times Books, 1984), p. 263;
Woodward, Veil, pp. 164, 229, 251; Steven Emerson,
Secret WarriorsQSQSM York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1988),
pp. 87-88; Raymond Tate, “Worldwide C3I and
Telecommunications,” p. 37, Seminar on Command,
Control, Communications and Intelligence, Center for
Information Policy Research, Harvard University, 1980;
Joan Edwards, “Reagan’s Charges ‘Total Untruths,’ Ex-
CIA Man Says,” Toronto Globe and Mail, June 29, 1984;
David Johnston and Michael Wines, “Intelligence
Material on Sandinistas Is Said to Have Involved
Lawmakers,” Aew York Times, September 15, 1991; Scott
Shane and Tom Bowman, “Catching Americans in NSA’s
Baltimore Sun, December 15, 1995.

9^ For RC-135 missions, see Dick van der Aart, Aerial
Espionage{^\\XQVJ^h\xYy , UK: Airlife Publishing, 1984),
pp. 93, 154-57; Captain Rosa Pasos, “Report on Military
Aggression Against Nicaragua by U.S. Imperialism,” in
Marlene Dixon, ed.. On Trial: Reagan’s War Against
NicaraguaiSdin Francisco: Synthesis Publications, 1985),
p. 49; Marlise Simons, “Nicaragua Lists U.S. ‘Violations’
in Bitter Reply to Reagan Speech,” New York Times, May
2, 1983; Todd Ensign, “Viewpoints: The First Refusal of
Military Duty over Nicaragua,” Newsday, July 7, 1987;
“Spying Over Nicaragua Revealed,” Washington Times,
July 10, 1987. For C-130 SIGINT missions, see Dr.

Dennis F. Casey and Msgt. Gabriel G. Marshall, A
Continuing Legacy: USAFSS-AIA, 1948- 2000: A Briej
History of the Air Intelligence Agency and Its Predecessor
Organizations(Smi Antonio, TX: Headquarters Air
Intelligence Agency, History Office, 2000), p. 28. Fred
Hiatt, “U.S. Said Planning More Exercises for Latin
America: One Site to Be El Salvador,” Washington Post,
October 26, 1984. For use of SIGINT to target AC- 130
gunships, see transcript, “The Pentagon Turned Its Back
on Them,” 60 Minutes, May 21, 1995.

10. Commander-in-Chief, Atlantic, Command History,
U.S. Atlantic Command 1982, 1983, p. XVI- 1, U.S. Joint
Forces Command FOIA; Office of Naval Intelligence,
Command History, Naval Intelligence Command for
1982, 1983, p. 1, ONI FOIA; Command History USS
Deyo for 1982, February 28, 1983, p. 1; Command
History USS Caron for 1982, 1983, both in Ships
Histories Division, Naval Historical Center, Washington,
DC; “U.S. Vessel on Alert for Cuban Arms Shipments,”
Los Angeles Times, February 24, 1982; Richard Halloran,
“US Destroyer Monitors Activity in Area of Salvador and
Nicaragua,” Vew York Times, February 25, 1982; Richard
Halloran, “U.S. Says Navy Surveillance Ship Is Stationed
Off Central America,” New York Times, February 25,
1982; “Judging Spies and Eyes,” Time, March 22, 1982,
p. 22; James LeMoyne with David C. Martin, “High-Tech
Spycraft,” Newsweek, March 22, 1982, p. 29.

11. Confidential interviews with former CIA officials. See
also “Haig Hints at New Talks with Cuba on Salvador,”
Globe and Mail, March 15, 1982; “New Report on El
Salvador Lacks Evidence for Charges,” Dow Jones News
Service, March 22, 1982.

12. CIA, Directorate of Intelligence, El Salvador:
Guerrilla Capabilities and Prospects over the Next Two
Years, appendix E, “External Support: The Cuba-
Nicaragua Pipeline,” October 1984, p. 37, CIA Electronic
FOIA Reading Room, Document No. 0000761619,
http://www.foia.cia.gov .

13. The best book by far on the shootdown of KAL 007
remains Seymour Hersh, The Target Is Destroy edQSQVJ
York: Random House, 1986).

14. Confidential interviews with NS A analysts and U.S.
Air Force intercept operators involved in the KAL 007
incident; History of the 6920th Electronic Security
Group: 1 July-31 December 1983, vol. 1, March 31,
1984, AIA FOIA; 6920th Electronic Security Group,
1983 Travis Trophy Submission for Misawa AB, Japan,
undated but circa 1984, AIA FOIA. See also Philip
Taubman, “U.S. Had Noticed Activity by Soviet,” New
York Times, September 14, 1993.

15. Hersh, Target, pp. 57-61.

16. Oral history, Interview with George P. Shultz,
December 18, 2002, p. 13, Ronald Reagan Presidential
Oral History Project, Miller Center, University of
Virginia, Charlottesville.

17. For the text of Secretary Shultz’s comments, see

“Secretary’s News Briefing, September 1, 1983,”

Department of State Bulletin, October 1983, pp. 1-2. For
press reporting on intelligence revelations stemming from
Shultz’s briefing, see David Shribman, “Side Effect: Peek
at U.S. Intelligence Abilities,” New York Times,
September 2, 1982; George C. Wilson, “Electronic Spy
Network Provided Detailed Account,” Washington Post,
September 2, 1983; Walter S. Mossberg and Gerald F.
Seib, “U.S. Response Gives Glimpse of Ability to Track
Russian Military Activities,” Wall Street Journal,
September 2, 1983.

18. Robert M. Gates, From the ShadowsQSow York:
Simon and Schuster, 1996), p. 267. It was not until
September 11, 1983, ten days after the shootdown, that
the State Department released a full transcript of the NS A
intercept tape, which confirmed that Major Osipovich had
repeatedly tried to warn KAL 007 to no effect. Michael
Getler, “Soviet Fired Gun Toward Jet, New Analysis
Shows,” Washington Post, September 12, 1983; Paul
Mann, “U.S. Admits Soviets Fired Cannon Shots,”
Aviation Week & Space Technology, September 19, 1983,

19. Reagan’s televised address to the nation can be found
at Ronald Reagan, “Address to the Nation on the Soviet
Attack on a Korean Civilian Airliner,” September 5,
1983,

http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1983/905

Ambassador Kirkpatrick’s presentation to the U.N. can be
found at “Ambassador Kirkpatrick’s Statement, U.N.
Security Council, September 6, 1983,” in Department oj
State Bulletin, October 1983, pp. 8-11. The transcript of
the three extracts from the NS A tape that Ambassador
Kirkpatrick played can be found at “U.S. Intercepts Soviet
Fighter Transmissions,” Aviation Week & Space
Technology, September 12, 1983, pp. 22-23.

20. Gates, From the Shadows, p. 268.

21. Alvin A. Snyder, Warriors of DisinformationQSQyN
York: Arcade Publishing, 1995); Alvin A. Snyder, “Flight
007 : The Rest of the Story,” Washington Post, September
1, 1996.

22. Raymond L. Garthoff, The Great Transition:
American-Soviet Relations and the End of the Cold

Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1994), pp.
119-20.

23. Interview with Walter G. Deeley; NS A OH-09-97,
oral history. Interview with Bobby Ray Inman, June 18,

1997, p. 11,NSAF0IA

24. Confidential interviews with NS A analysts. A caustic
analysis of the performance of the Soviet air defense
system can be found in “Special Analysis: USSR: The
Shootdown,” National Intelligence Daily, September 7,
1983, p. 2, RG-263, entry 42, box 69, NA, CP; NI IIM
85-10008, CIA, interagency intelligence memorandum.
Air Defense of the USSR, December 1985, p. 13, CIA
Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Document No.
0000261292, http://www.foia.cia.gov . See also William
L. Norton, Briefing on the Re-Organization of Soviet Air
and Air Defense Forces(fdi\h Church, VA: E- Systems
Melpar Division, 1984), pp. 29-33, paper presented at the
Strategy 84 Conference, Washington, DC, March 12,
1984; Richard Halloran, “Soviet’s Defenses Called
Inflexible,” Aew York Times, September 18, 1983; Walter
Pincus, “The Soviets Had the Wrong Stuff,” Washington
Post, September 18, 1983; Dusko Doder, “Soviets Said to
Remove Air Officers,” Washington Post, October 5,
1983; Bill Gertz, “Soviet 007 Tape Revealing,”
Washington Times, August 15, 1992.

25. HQ 22nd Marine Amphibious Unit, Command
Chronology: 1-31 May 1983, June 7, 1983, part 3, p. 1,
Marine Corps Historical Center, Quantico, VA; message,
Beirut 05379, AMEMBASSY BEIRUT to SECSTATE
WASHDC, May 6, 1983, Department of State Electronic

FOIA Reading Room, Document No. 83BEIRUT05379,
http://www.foia.state.gov : message, Beirut 05381,

AMEMBASSY BEIRUT to AMEMBASSY AMMAN,
May 6, 1983, Department of State Electronic FOIA
Reading Room, Document No. 83BEIRUT05381,
http://www.foia.state.gov .

26. Confidential interviews with former senior CIA
officials. See also Martin and Wolcott, Best Laid Plans,
pp. 105, 133; R. W. Apple Jr., “U.S. Knew of Iran’s Role
in Two Beirut Bombings,” New York Times, December 8,
1986; Stephen Engelberg, “U.S. Calls Iranian Cleric
Leading Backer of Terror,” New York Times, August 27,
1989; “New Evidence Ties Iran to Terrorism,” Newsweek,
November 15, 1999, p. 7.

27. Jack Anderson, “U.S. Was Warned of Bombing at
Beirut Embassy,” Washington Post, May 10, 1983; Jack
Anderson, “Syria Supported Terrorism, Say U.S.,
Britain,” Newsday, November 7, 1986; Apple, “U.S.
Knew.”

28. The intercept quote is taken from Civil Action No. 01-
2094 (RCL), memorandum opinion. May 30, 2003,
Deborah D. Peterson v. Islamic Republic of Iran, p. 12,
U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. For
background of Musawi, his organization, and its
relationship with the Iranian government, see CIA,
Directorate of Intelligence, The Terrorist Threat to US

Personnel in Beirut, January 12, 1984, CIA Electronic
FOIA Reading Room, Document No. 0000256547,
http://www.foia.cia.gov : CIA, Directorate of Intelligence,
Lebanon: The Hizb Allah, September 27, 1984, CIA
Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Document No.
0000256558, http://www.foia.cia.gov : memorandum for
the DCI, Iranian Support for International Terrorism,
November 22, 1986, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading
Room, Document No. 0000258607,

http://www.foia.cia.gov . For September 27, 1983, NSA
warning message, see James P. Stevenson, The $5 Billion
Misunderstanding: The Collapse of the Navy's A-12
Stealth Bomber Program(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute
Press, 2001), p. 39n.

29. For a rendition of all the intelligence and security
failings surrounding the October 23, 1983, bombing of the
U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut except for the NSA
warning message, see Report of the DoD Commission on
Beirut International Airport Terrorist Act, October 23,
1983 (Long Commission)(y\f DC: GPO, 1983).

30. Message, 230725Z OCT 83, CIA to [deleted], October

23, 1983, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room,

Document No. 0000805432, http://www.foia.cia.gov :
message, 230822Z OCT 83, CIA to [deleted], October 23,
1983, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Document
No. 0000805431, http://www.foia.cia.gov .

31. For SIGINT aircraft orbiting the Mediterranean, see
U.S. Sixth Fleet, 1984 Sixth Fleet Command History,
1985, p. IV-58, Operational Archives, Naval Historical
Center, Washington, DC. For Marine SIGINT operations,
confidential interviews, as well as “Marines Thumb Noses
at Local Marksmen,” Globe and Mail, December 15,
1983.

32. Confidential interviews.

33. “Director Completes Distinguished Career,” NSA
Newsletter, April 1985, p. 3, NSA FOIA; Robert C. Toth,
“Security Agency Chief Said Forced out of Office,”
Washington Post, April 19, 1985; George C. Wilson,
“Reagan to Name Army General as NSA Director,”
Washington Post, April 20, 1985; David Burnham, “Move
into World of Computer Nets by Intelligence Unit Raises
Doubt,” New York Times, June 27, 1985; Bill Gertz,
“Superseded General Expected to Resign,” Washington
Times, February 22, 1988.

34. For the brief but intense fight over the selection of
Odom to be NSA director, see Douglas F. Garthoff,
Directors of Central Intelligence as Leaders of the U.S.
Intelligence Community: 7 94 (5-2 Washington, DC:
Center for the Study of Intelligence, 2005), pp. 167-68.

35. Odom background from biographical data sheet, Lt.
General William E. Odom, Department of the Army,

Office of Public Affairs; “New Director Named,” NSA
Newsletter, July 1985, p. 2, “View from the Top,” NSA
Newsletter, November 1987, pp. 6-8, both NSA FOIA;
Wilson, “Reagan to Name”; Charles R. Babcock,
“Professorial Director NSA Suddenly in Spotlight,”
Washington Post, May 31, 1986; Emerson, Secret
Warriors, p. 81.

36. Woodward quote from Woodward, Veil, p. 450.

37. NSA OH-09-97, oral history. Interview with Bobby
Ray Inman, June 18, 1997, p. 6, NSA FOIA.

38. For details of the Wobensmith case, see Stephen
Engelberg, “A Career in Ruins in Wake of Iran-Contra
Affair,” New York Times, June 3, 1988.

39. NSA OH-09-97, oral history. Interview with Bobby
Ray Inman, June 18, 1997, p. 7, NSA FOIA.

40. Confidential interviews with former CIA officials.

41. Because of the public revelation of Chalet’s existence
in June 1979, the Byeman designation for the system was
changed from Chalet to Vortex, or VO. In 1987, the
Vortex system was again renamed Mercury, or MC.
Angelo Codevilla, Informing Statecraft: Intelligence for a
New CenturylNow York: Free Press, 1992), p. 116;
Christopher Anson Pike, “Canyon, Rhyolite and
Aquacade: U.S. Signals Intelligence Satellites in the

1970s,” Spaceflight, vol. 37 (November 1995): p. 383;
Jonathan McDowell, “U.S. Reconnaissance Satellite
Programs, Part 2, Beyond Imaging,” Quest, vol. 4, no. 4
(1995): p. 42. For the codename Mercury, see Craig
Covault and Joseph C. Anselmo, “Titan Explosion
Destroys Secret ‘Mercury’ SIGINT Satellite,” Aviation
Week & Space Technology, August 17, 1998, p. 28.

42. For Vortex monitoring of Soviet forces in
Afghanistan, confidential interviews. For monitoring SS-
24 ICBM communications, see Major A. Andronov,
“American Geosynchronous SIGINT Satellites,”
Zarubezhnoye Voyennoye Obozreniye, no. 12 (1993): pp.
37-43. For Vortex generating intelligence on Chernobyl
and the Pavlograd explosion, see Jeffrey T. Richelson,
The U.S. Intelligence Community, 3rd ed. (Boulder, CO:
Westview Press, 1995), pp. 172, 179; Jeffrey T.
Richelson, America ’s Space Sentinels: DSP Satellites and
National SecurityihdiSMVQncQ’. University of Kansas Press,
1999), p. 153; “Soviet Missile-Motor Plant Shut by
Explosion, Pentagon Says,” Washington Post, May 18,
1988; Peter Almond and Paul Bedard, “Explosion Deals
Serious Setback to New Soviet ICBMs,” Washington
Times, May 18, 1988.

43. Details of Pelton’s espionage on behalf of the Soviet
Union derived from his interrogation by the FBI can be
found in FBI Special Agent David E. Faulkner, affidavit

in support of complaint, December 20, 1985, in

CRIMINAL No. HM85-062I, United States of America v.
Ronald William Pelton, U.S. District Court for the District
of Maryland. The best general description of the Pelton
case is in Thomas B. Allen and Norman Polmar,
Merchants of TreasonQAQSM York: Dell Publishing, 1988),
pp. 255-67.

44. For details of the Ivy Bells operation, see Sherry

Sontag and Christopher Drew, Blind Man's BluffiJAQSM
York: Public Affairs, 1998), pp. 158-83; Michael Dobbs,
“KGB Chief Details U.S. Spy Operation,” Washington
Post, September 3, 1988; Norman Polmar, “How Many
Spy Subs,” Naval Institute Proceedings, December 1996,
p. 87. For the Russian perspective, see Nikolai Brusnitsin,
Openness and EspionageQsAo^cossf’. Military Publishers
House, 1990), pp. 13-14; N. Burbiga, “A Fishy Day at the
CIA,” Izvestia, March I, 1994. See also Angelo M.
Codevilla, “Pollard Was No Pelton,” Forward (N.Y.),
December 8, 2000,

http://www.jonathanpollard.Org/2000/120800.htm.

45. Interview with Charles R. Lord; confidential
interviews with former NS A officials. For damage done
by Pelton generally, see Woodward, Veil, pp. 448-51. For
loss of the data from the Moscow listening posts, see
Mike Frost, SpyworldiT ovonio: Doubleday Canada,
1994), pp. 245-52; “Alleged Radio Intelligence

Operations from US Embassy in Moscow,” BBC
Summary of World Broadcasts, March 31, 1980. For the
tree stump operation, see “US Espionage Activities in
USSR: Two CIA Agents Detected,” BBC Summary oj
World Broadcasts, March 28, 1980; “Izvestiya on Alleged
Espionage Operations by US Diplomats,” BBC Summary
of World Broadcasts, March 29, 1980.

46. Indictment, December 20, 1985, in CRIMINAL No.
HM85-0621, United States of America v. Ronald William
Pelton, U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland,
Baltimore, Maryland.

47. Richard Whittle, “Libya Jets Intercept U.S. Plane,”
Dallas Morning News, January 15, 1986.

48. Message, JCS 2800 15Z Feb 86, JCS to multiple
recipients, February 28, 1986, JCS FOIA; Command
Historian 6916th Electronic Security, History of the
6916th Electronic Security Squadron: 1 January-30 June
1986, 1986, vol. 2, tab 36, AIA FOIA; 1986 Command
History, USS Caron, 1987, p. 1, Ships Histories Division,
Naval Historical Center, Washington, DC; confidential
interview. See also Joseph S. Bermudez, “Libyan SAMs
and Air Defenses,” Jane's Defence Weekly, May 17,
1986, p. 880; Seymour M. Hersh, “Target Qaddafi,” New
York Times Magazine, January 22, 1987, p. 71; Capt. Don
East, USN, “The History of U.S. Naval Airborne
Electronic Reconnaissance: Part 2, the European Theater

and VQ-2,” Hook, Summer 1987: p. 42.

49. Confidential interviews; U.S. Sixth Fleet, 1986 Sixth

Fleet Command History, 1987, p. III-6, Operational
Archives, Naval Historical Center, Washington, DC;
George C. Wilson, “Alert Brings Out Libyan Military’s
Weaknesses,” Washington Post, January 9, 1986;

“Gadaffi’s men fear getting lost,” Jane’s Defence Weekly,
January 18, 1986, p. 43.

50. George C. Wilson, “U.S. Planes Retaliate for Libyan
Attack,” Washington Post, March 25, 1986.

51. Woodward, Veil, pp. 444-45; Oliver R. North and
William Novak, Under Fire: An American Story(HQyN
York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1991), p. 216; Bob
Woodward and Patrick E. Tyler, “U.S. Shows Spy
Systems’ Capabilities,” Washington Post, April 15, 1986;
Bob Woodward, “Intelligence ‘Coup’ Tied Libya to
Blast,” Washington Post, April 22, 1986; Leslie H. Gelb,
“How Libya Messages Informed U.S.,” New York Times,
April 23, 1986; Rick Atkinson, “Bomb Suspect Sent to
Germany,” Washington Post, May 24, 1996; “Trial
Begins in the 1986 Bombing of Berlin Disco,” Seattle
Times, November 18, 1997.

52. Frank Greve, “Spying on Libya Yields Information
Bonanza,” Chronicle, May 18, 1986.

53. Hersh, “Target Qaddafi,” p. 74.

54. W. O. Studeman, “The Philosophy of Intelligence,” p.
105, Seminar on Intelligence, Command and Control,
Center for Information Policy Research, Harvard
University, December 1991.

55. Stephen Engelberg, “Head of National Security
Agency Plans to Retire,” New York Times, February 23,
1988; Molly Moore, “Odom to Resign as Head of NSA,”
Washington Post, February 23, 1988; Gertz, “Superseded
General.”

56. Studeman background from biographical data sheet,
RADM William Oliver Studeman, Department of the
Navy, Office of Public Affairs, October 1, 1987; “Agency
Welcomes New Director RADM William O. Studeman,”
NSA Newsletter, September 1988, p. 2, NSA FOIA.

57. John Barron, Breaking the Ring: The Rise and Fall oj
the Walker Family Spy NetworkQSQw York: Avon Books,
1987), pp. 196-97.

58. Confidential interviews.

59. Mark Urban, UK Eyes Alpha(London’. Faber and

Faber, 1996), p. Ill; Bernard E. Trainor, “Bush Bars
Normal Ties Now; Beijing Is Warned,” New York Times,
June 9, 1989; Daniel Williams and David Holley, “China
Hard-Finers Appear in Control,” Los Angeles Times, June
9, 1989; “Communications Vacuumed: Satellite

Intelligence Provides Key to Bush China Decision,”
Communications Daily, June 12, 1989, p. 5; “Reign of
Terror,” Newsweek, June 19, 1989, p. 14. See also the
declassified morning intelligence summaries for the
secretary of state, examples of which are at
http://www.seas.gwu.edu/nsarchive/NSAEBB 1 6/documen

60. Oral history. Interview with Warren Zimmermann,
December 10, 1996, Foreign Affairs Oral History
Collection, Association for Diplomatic Studies and
Training, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

61. For the deterioration of U.S. relations with Panama,
see Seymour M. Hersh, “Our Man in Panama: The
Creation of a Thug,” Life, March 1990, pp. 81-93. For
intelligence efforts in Panama prior to the U.S. invasion,
see U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command,
Annual Historical Report INSCOM Fiscal Year 1990,
1991, pp. 41^2, INSCOM FOIA. Also, confidential
interviews. For quote concerning elimination of
SOUTHCOM and CIA HUMINT sources, see Captain
Brian J. Cummins, USA, National Reconnaissance
Support to the Army(Y ovi Leavenworth, KS: U.S. Army
Command and General Staff College, 1994), p. 101.

62. Department of the Army, Office of the Deputy Chief
of Staff for Intelligence, Annual Historical Review: 1
October 1989 to 30 September 1990, 1991, p. 4-52,
National Security Archive, Washington, DC; Command

Chronology, Marine Support Battalion, for the Period 1
July-31 December 1989, 1990, enclosure 4; Command
Chronology 2nd Radio Battalion for the Period 1 July-31
December 1989, 1990, enclosure 2, pp. 1, 4, both in
Marine Corps Historical Center, Quantico, VA; “Just
Cause,” Insight, January-March 1990, pp. 11-13, AIA
FOIA; Technical Sergeant. Mark Harlfmger, “Flight
Operations End at 94th IS,” Spokesman, May 1997, p. 23,
AIA FOIA. For creation of a Panama Cell at NS A, see W.
O. Studeman, “The Philosophy of Intelligence,” p. 109,
Seminar on Intelligence, Command and Control, Center
for Information Policy Research, Harvard University,
December 1991.

63. Cummins, National Reconnaissance Support, pp.
104-05. For more concerning NSA’s attempts at tracking
Noriega, see Christopher Andrew, For the President's
Eyes 0^/y(New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1995), p.
514; Bill Gertz, “NSA Eavesdropping Was Vital in
Panama,” Washington Times, January 10, 1990.

64. Patrick E. Tyler, “U.S. Commander Decries Leak on
Panamanian Invasion,” Washington Post, February 27,
1990; Cummins, National Reconnaissance Support, pp.
104-05.

65. Dr. Thomas R. Johnson, American Cryptology During
the Cold War, 1945-1989, bk. 3, Retrenchment and
Reform, 1 972-1 980{T ort Meade: Center for Cryptologic

History, 1995), p. 21, NSA FOIA. For the seventy-five
thousand NSA personnel figure, see declaration of Dr.
Richard W. Gronet, Director of Policy, National Security
Agency, June 14, 1989, in CIV. No. HM87-1564, Ray
Lindsey v. National Security Agency /Central Security
Service, p. 5, U.S. District Court for the District of
Maryland.

66. Confidential interviews.

67. Bob Drogin, “NSA Blackout Reveals Downside of
Sqcvqcj/' Los Angeles Times, March 13, 2000.

68. Memorandum, Vice Admiral Bobby R. Inman, USN,
to Special Assistant, Office of the Secretary of Defense,
Transition Coordination, sec. 8, Modernization
Objectives, December 9, 1980, NSA FOIA; Codev ilia.
Informing Statecraft, p. 124; Loch K. Johnson, Secret
Agencies: U.S. Intelligence in a Hostile World(f\QSN
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), p. 21.

1 1 : Troubles in Paradise

L This era in NSA’s history is covered in greater detail in
Matthew M. Aid, “The Time of Troubles: The US
National Security Agency in the Twenty-first Century,”
Intelligence and National Security, vol. 15, no. 3 (Autumn
2000): pp. 1-32.

Z David Y. McManis, “Technology, Intelligence, and
Control,” p. 20, Seminar on Intelligence, Command and

Control, Center for Information Policy Research, Harvard
University, February 1993.

U The literature on Operations Desert Shield/Storm is
substantial. The most detailed official accounts of the war
can be found in: United States Central Command,
Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm: Executive
Summary, July 11, 1991, p. 1, National Security Archive,
Washington, DC; Department of Defense, Conduct of the
Persian Gulf War: Final Report to (Washington,

DC: GPO, April 1992); Brigadier General Robert H.
Scales Jr., USA, Certain Victory: The U.S. Army in the
Gulf Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1994). The
conduct of the air campaign is detailed in Dr. Thomas A.
Keaney and Dr. Eliot A. Cohen, eds.. Gulf War Air Power
Washington, DC: GPO, 1993), 5 vols. The best
all-around books on the war are Rick Atkinson, Crusade:
The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf /U 2 r(New York:
Houghton Mifflin, 1993); Michael R. Gordon and General
Bernard E. Trainor, The GeneraTs m7r(Boston: Little,
Brown, 1995). The Saudi perspective on the war can be
found in HRH General Khaled bin Sultan, Desert
Warrior(HQSM York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1995).

4, NSA’s successes and failings in Operation Desert
Storm are detailed in David A. Hatch, Shield and Storm:
The Cryptologic Community in the Desert Operations,
vol. 5, Special Series, Crisis Collection (Fort Meade:

Center for Cryptologic History, 1992). SIGINT’s success
against the Iraqi air defense system from Department of
Defense, Conduct of the Persian Gulf Washington,
DC: GPO, 1992), pp. 12, 150, 154, 164; Keaney and
Cohen, Gulf War Air Power, vol. 2, part 1, pp. 77-82, vol.
4, p. 182, and vol. 5, part 2, pp. 51, 190; Scales, Certain
Victory, p. 178; Richard G. Davis, On Target: Organizing
and Executing the Strategic Air Campaign Against
/ra^( Washington, DC: Air Force History and Museums
Program, 2002), p. 152.

^ Final draft, SIGINT 101 Seminar Course Module, 2002,
NS A FOIA. McConnell quote from letter, McConnell to
Senator Sam Nunn with enclosure, April 28, 1992, p. 6,
NSA FOIA.

C Monograph, John F. Stewart Jr. and the Vigilant Eye oj
the Storm(V ovi Huachuca, AZ: History Office, U.S. Army
Intelligence Center and Fort Huachuca, no date), p. 18.

T bin Sultan, Desert Warrior, p. 399; Mark Urban UK
Eyes Alpha(Londorv. Faber and Faber, 1996), p. 170;
David A. Fulghum, “Yugoslavia Successfully Attacked
by Computers,” Aviation Week & Space Technology,
August 23, 1999, p. 31.

L Keaney and Cohen, Gulf War Air Power, summary
vol., p. 98.

9^ Brigadier General John F. Stewart, Jr., Operation

Desert Storm. The Military Intelligence Story: A View
from the G-2, 3rd U.S. Army, April 1991, p. 6, INSCOM
FOIA; U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command,
Annual Historical Review, U.S. Army Intelligence and
Security Command (INSCOM): Fiscal Year 1991,
appendix K, 1992, p. 29, INSCOM FOIA; Daniel F.
Baker, “Deep Attack: A Military Intelligence Task Force
in Desert Storm,” Military Intelligence Professional
Bulletin, October-December 1991, p. 39; Lt. Colonel
Richard J. Quirk, III, USA, Intelligence for the Division:
A G2 Perspective{CdiA\^\Q Barracks, PA: U.S. Army War
College, 1992), p. 307; Major Raymond E. Coia, USMC,
A Critical Analysis of the I MEF Intelligence
Performance in the 1991 Persian Gulf IF( 2 r(Quantico,
VA: Marine Corps Command and Staff College, 1995), p.
6; Major Robert H. Taylor, USA, Heavy Division Organic
Signals Intelligence (SIGINT): Added Value or Added
BaggagefV ort Leavenworth, KS: School of Advanced
Military Studies, U.S. Army Command and General Staff
College, 1996), p. 24; Lt. Colonel John J. Bird, USA,
Analysis of Intelligence Support to the 1991 Persian GulJ
War: Enduring Lessons{Cdix[\^\Q Barracks, PA: U.S.
Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute, 2004), pp.
7-8. For Iraqi communications security being more
thorough than the Soviets’ during the Cold War, see
Barbara Starr, “Measur ing the Success of the Intelligence
War,” Jane’s Defence Weekly, April 20, 1991, p. 636.

10. Keaney and Cohen, Gulf War Air Power, vol. 1, part
2, p. 270. McManis quote from David Y. McManis,
“Technology, Intelligence, and Control,” p. 31, Seminar
on Intelligence, Command and Control, Center for
Information Policy Research, Harvard University,
February 1993.

11. U.S. Senate, Armed Services Committee, Department

of Defense Authorization for Appropriation, FY 1992 and
FY 1993, part 2, 102nd Congress, 1st session, 1991, p. 19;
Scales, Certain Victory, Til, 237, 251; Gordon and
Trainor, General’s War, p. 365; Taylor, Heavy Division^.
24; Colonel John Patrick Leake, Operational Leadership
in the Gulf War: Lessons from the Schwarzkopf-Franks
Controversy, undated,

http://www.cfcsc.dnd.ca/irc/amscl/024.html.

12. According to Defense Department records, the Iraqis
fired forty-two Scud missiles at Israel, targeting Tel Aviv,
Haifa, and the Israeli nuclear reactor and weapons facility
at Dimona in the Negev Desert. OGA- 1040-23-91,
Defense Intelligence Agency, Defense Intelligence
Assessment: Mobile Short-Range Ballistic Missile
Targeting in Operation DESERT STORM, November 1,
1991, p. 1, partially declassified and on file at the
National Security Archive, Washington, DC; Captain
Brian J. Cummins, USA, National Reconnaissance
Support to the Army(Y ovi Leavenworth, KS: U.S. Army

Command and General Staff College, June 1994), pp. 69-
70.

13. Defense Intelligence Agency, OGA- 1040-23 -91,
Defense Intelligence Assessment: Mobile Short- Range
Ballistic Missile Targeting in Operation DESERT
STORM, November 1, 1991, p. 7, partially declassified
and on file at the National Security Archive, Washington,
DC; Cummins, National Reconnaissance Support, p. 70.

14. Confidential interviews with a number of U.S. Army
and Marine Corps division, brigade, and regimental
commanders conducted between 1992 and 1995. For
“sanitization” problems, see Office of the Assistant
Secretary of Defense (Command, Control,
Communication and Intelligence), Intelligence Program
Support Group, Final Report: Operation Desert
Shield/Desert Storm Intelligence Dissemination Study,
1992, p. 4-15, DoD Electronic FOIA Reading Room. See
also Anthony H. Cordesman and Abraham R. Wagner,
The Lessons of Modern War, vol. 4, The GulJ
IFar(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996), p. 296.

15. Use of Iraqi Americans in the military for SIGINT

service from anonymous letter, “Army Linguists,”
Soldiers, August 2001,

http://www.army.mil/Soldiers/aug2001/feedback.html.

The secret hiring of three hundred Kuwaitis from U.S.
Army Intelligence and Security Command, Annual

Historical Review, U.S. Army Intelligence and Security
Command (INSCOM): Fiscal Year 1991, appendix K,
1992, p. 31, INSCOM FOIA. Quote from Brigadier
General John F. Stewart, Jr., USA, Operation Desert
Storm: The Military Intelligence Story: A View from the
G-2 3rd U.S Army, April 1991, p. 22, INSCOM FOIA

16. Major William E. David, USA, Modularity: A Force
Design Methodology for the Force XXI Divisional
Military Intelligence Battalion{Y ort Leavenworth, KS:
School of Advanced Military Studies, U.S. Army
Command and General Staff College, 1995), pp. 18-19.

17. U.S. House of Representatives, Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence, Report No. 101-1008, Report
by the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, 101st
Congress, 2nd session, January 2, 1991, p. 9.

18. Defense Department, Office of the Inspector General,
Report No. 96-03, Final Report on the Verification
Inspection of the National Security Agency, February 13,
1996, p. 2, DOD FOIA.

19. NSA/CSS, report of the Director’s Task Force on
Organizational and Procedural Dysfunction, Bureaucracy
and NSA: Management's Views, March 1991, pp. 1-2,
NSA FOIA.

20. This conclusion came through loud and clear in a
March 1992 report to the director of the CIA, which held

NS A out to be a model of what the U.S. intelligence
community should have been aspiring to, stating, “NSA’s
control and influence over almost all aspects of the
SIGINT discipline offers a sense of cohesion, focus and
accountability that would be advantageous to invest in.”
ICS-4548/92, memorandum. Imagery Blue Ribbon Task
Force to Director of Central Intelligence, Transmittal of
Report Regarding Restructuring the Imagery Community,
March 6, 1992, p. 1 1, MOR DocID: 924226, CIA FOIA.

21. President George H. W. Bush, “Remarks at a
Presentation Ceremony for the National Security Agency
Worldwide Awards in Fort Meade, Maryland,” May 1,
1991,

http://csdl.tamu.edu/bushlibrary/papers/ 1991/91050101 .hh

22. U.S. Senate, Select Committee on Intelligence, Report
Together with Additional and Minority Views:
Appropriations for Fiscal Year 1994 for Intelligence
Activities, 103rd Congress, 2nd session, July 28, 1993, p.
4; memorandum, Studeman to All Employees, Farewell,
April 8, 1992, p. 1, NSA FOIA; “A Visit with the Deputy
Director,” NSA Newsletter, November 1990, p. 2, NSA
FOIA.

23. Confidential interviews.

24. Cummins, National Reconnaissance Support, p. 5.

25. Memorandum, Studeman to All Employees, Farewell,

April 8, 1992, NS A FOIA.

26. Memorandum, Taylor to DIRNSA, Thoughts on
Strategic Issues for the Institution, April 9, 1999, p.3. The
author is grateful to Dr. Jeffrey T. Richelson for making
available a copy of this document.

27. SOV 9 1-1 003 9X, CIA, Directorate of Intelligence,
The Implications of a Breakup of the USSR: Defense
Assets at Risk, September 1991, CIA Electronic FOIA
Reading Room, Document 0000499575,
http://www.foia.cia.gov .

28. Confidential interview.

29. “Third Party Nations: Partners and Targets,”
Cryptologic Quarterly, vol. 7, no. 4 (Winter 1989): p. 17,
DOCID: 3221078, NSA FOIA.

30. Confidential interviews.

31. McConnell background from biographical data sheet.
Rear Admiral John Michael McConnell, Department of
the Navy, Office of Public affairs, August 1, 1991;
“Agency Welcomes New Director Vice Admiral John
Michael McConnell,” NSA Newsletter, August 1992, p. 2,
NSA FOIA.

32. For McConnell’s recollections of this time period, see
John M. McConnell, “The Role of the Current

Intelligence Officer for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff,” Seminar on Intelligence, Command and
Control, Center for Information Policy Research, Harvard
University, August 1994.

33. Lawrence Wright, “The Spymaster,” New Yorker,
January 21, 2008, p. 44.

34. Letter, McConnell to Senator Sam Nunn with
enclosure, April 28, 1992, p. 5, NSA FOIA.

35. “NSA Plans for the Future,” NSA Newsletter, January
1993, p. 4, NSA FOIA; Department of Defense, Office of
the Inspector General, Report No. IR 96-03, Final Report
on the Verification Inspection of the National Security
Agency, February 13, 1996, p. 6. “Not warmly embraced”
quote from John M. McConnell, “The Evolution of
Intelligence and the Public Policy Debate on Encryption,”
p. 153, Seminar on Intelligence, Command and Control,
Center for Information Policy Research, Harvard
University, January 1997.

36. This period at NSA is detailed in Aid, “Time of

Troubles.” For the decline in the size of the budget and
personnel of the U.S. intelligence community, see Charlie
Allen, Assistant Director of Central Intelligence for
Collection, PowerPoint presentation, “Intelligence
Community Overview for Japanese Visitors from Public
Security Investigation Agency,” June 22, 1998,

http://cryptome.org/cia-ico.htm : “Statement for the

Record by Lt. General Michael V. Hayden, USAF,
Director NSA/CSS Before the Joint Inquiry of the Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence and the House
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence,” October
17, 2002, p. 6. “One of the side effects” quote from U.S.
Senate, Report No. 107-351, and U.S. House of
Representatives, Report No. 107-792, report of the U.S.
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and U.S. House
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Joint
Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and
After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 200 f 107th
Congress, 2nd session, December 2002 (declassified and
released in July 2003), p. 76.

37. Major Harold E. Bullock, USAF, Peace by
Committee: Command and Control Issues in

Multinational Peace Enforcement OperationsQsAdiXSNQW
Air Force Base, AL: School of Advanced Airpower
Studies, 1994), pp. 9-10; Norman L. Cooling, “Operation
Restore Hope in Somalia: A Tactical Action Turned
Strategic Defeat,” Marine Corps Gazette, September
2001, p. 92. “Somalis from salami” quote from Robert F.
Baumann, Lawrence A. Yates, and Versalle F.
Washington, ''My Clan Against the World”: US and
Coalition Forces in Somalia, 1 992-1 994(¥ort
Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2003),
p. 48.

38. For the Marine Corps radio battalion detachment
SIGINT operations in Somalia, see I Marine
Expeditionary Force, I MEF Command Chronology 1992,
sec. 2, pp. 22-23, passim. Marine Corps Historical
Center, Quantico, VA. For examples of the SIGINT
collected from Aideed’s militia, see U.S. Army
Intelligence and Security Command, Annual Command
History, U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command
(INSCOM): Fiscal Year 1993, 1994, p. 35, INSCOM
FOIA; trial transcript, April 23, 2001, in 98 Cr. 1028,
United States of America v. Usama bin Laden et ah, pp.
4458-59, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of
New York. For Travis Trophy award, see press release,
“1st Radio Battalion Wins NSA’s Director’s Trophy for

1993, ” Headquarters U.S. Marine Corps, Division of
Public Affairs, May 4, 1994; “Honoring the Best of the
Best,” NSA Newsletter, July 1994, p. 3, NSA FOIA.

39. U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command,
Annual Command History, U.S. Army Intelligence and
Security Command (INSCOM): Fiscal Year 1994, 1995,
p. 32, INSCOM FOIA; Air Intelligence Agency, History
of the Air Intelligence Agency: 1 January-31 December

1994, vol. 1, pp. 30-31, AIA FOIA; Lt. Commander
Darren Sawyer, USN, “JTF JIC Operations: Critical
Success Factors,” Military Intelligence Professional
Bulletin, April-June 1995, p. 11; “704th MI Brigade,”

Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin, April-June
1996; “23rd IS Thrives in Joint Environment,”

Spokesman, October 1995, p. 20, AIA FOIA; Lt. Col. Bob
Butler, “23rd IS Inactivation Ceremony,” Spokesman,
August 1996, p. 5, AIA FOIA; George J. Church,
“Destination Haiti,” Newsweek, September 26, 1994, p.
23; Scott Shane and Tom Bowman, “America’s Fortress
of Spies,” Baltimore Sun, December 3, 1995.

40. CAFF, Operation Uphold Democracy Initial
Impressions: Haiti D-20 to D+ 40, vol. 1, December
1994, p. 93; CAFF, Operation Uphold Democracy Initial
Impressions: Haiti D-20 to D+ 40, vol. 2, April 1995, p.
175, both in the library of CAFF, Fort Feavenworth, KS.
See also 2nd Ft. Tania Chacho, “XVII Airborne CMISE
Support in Haiti,” Military Intelligence Professional
Bulletin, April-June 1995, pp. 14-17.

41. “Yugo slavia: Army Fails to Ease Tension,” National
Intelligence Daily, April 2, 1991, p. 9, CIA Electronic
FOIA Reading Room, Document No. 0000372387,
http://www.foia.cia.gov . Zimmermann quote from oral
history. Interview with Warren Zimmermann, December
10, 1996, Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection,
Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, Fibrary
of Congress, Washington, DC. For Zimmermann’ s
account of his time in Belgrade, see Warren
Zimmermann, “The Fast Ambassador: A Memoir of the

Collapse of Yugoslavia,” Foreign Affairs, March/April
1995, pp. 2-21; Warren Zimmermann, Origins of a
Catastrophe: Yugoslavia and Its Destroyers — America’s
Last Ambassador Tells What Happened and /f7zj;(New
York: Crown, 1996).

42. Confidential interview. See message, DCI Interagency
Balkan Task Force to members. Task Force Information,
December 29, 1992, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading
Room, http://www.foia.cia.gov : Major William P.
Clappin, USA, Moving Signals Intelligence from National
Systems to Army Warfighters at Corps and DivisioniforX
Leavenworth, KS: U.S. Army Command and General
Staff College, June 5, 1998), p. 34. For SIGINT targeting
of Bosnian Serb air defense systems, see Tim Ripley,
“Operation Deny Flight,” World Air Power Journal, vol.
16 (Spring 1994): pp. 19-20; Dylan Eklund, “The
Reconnaissance Squadron,” Air World International,
November 1995, p. 36; Chris Pocock, “U-2: The Second
Generation,” World Air Power Journal, vol. 28 (Spring
1997): p. 94.

43. Urban, UK Eyes Alpha, p. 216; Tim Ripley, Operation
Deliberate Force(Lancaster, U.K.: Center for Defence
and International Security Studies, 1999), p. 64; Paul
Quinn-Judge, “Serbs Called Low on Fuel, Options,”
Boston Globe, June 1, 1995, p. 1; Karsten Prager,
“Message from Serbia,” Time, July 17, 1995.

44. Walter Pincus, “U.S. Sought Other Bosnia Arms
Sources,” Washington Post, April 26, 1996; James Risen,
“Iran Paid Bosnian Leader, CIA Says,” Los Angeles
Times, December 31, 1996.

45. Robert C. Owens, Col., USAF, Deliberate Force: A
Case Study in Effective Air Cam/?a/g^mg(Maxwell Air
Force Base, AL: School of Advanced Airpower Studies,
1988), pp. 8-14-8-16; Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron
Six, Command History Fleet Air Reconnaissance
Squadron Six for CY 1995, enclosure 1, 1996, p. 3, Navy
FOIA; “Operation Deliberate Force,” World Air Power
Journal, vol. 24 (Spring 1996): pp. 24, 28.

46. Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for
Acquisition and Technology, Report of the Defense
Science Board Task Force on Improved Application oj
Intelligence to the Battlefield: May-July 1996, July 1996,
p. 49, DoD FOIA; Clappin, Moving Signals Intelligence,
p. 34; Major Kathleen A. Gavle, USA, Division
Intelligence Requirements for Sustained Peace
Enforcement Operations(Y ort Leavenworth, KS: School
of Advanced Military Studies, U.S. Army Command and
General Staff College, 2000), pp. 16-17. For a few
examples of SIGINT success stories in the post-Dayton
Peace Accords period, see Rick Atkinson, “GIs Signal
Bosnians: Yes, We’re Listening,” Washington Post,
March 18, 1996; Rick Atkinson, “Warriors Without a

War,” Washington Post, April 14, 1996.

47. Seymour M. Hersh, Chain of Command: The Road
from 9/11 to Abu G/zra/Z?(New York: Harper Collins
Publishers, 2004), pp. 324-30.

48. John M. Goshko, “Transcripts Show Joking Cuban

Pilots,” Washington Post, February 28, 1996; Barbara
Crossette, “U.S. Says Cubans Knew They Fired on
Civilian Planes,” New York Times, February 28, 1996;
Mabel! Dieppa, “Basulto: U.S. Conspired with Cuba,”
Miami Herald, January 18, 1997. For intelligence
coverage of the Cuban reaction to the shootdown incident,
see “Cuba: Casting Shootdown as Bilateral Issue,”
National Intelligence Daily, February 27, 1996, CIA
Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Document No.
0000957791, http://www.foia.cia.gov : “Cuba: Handling
Aftermath of Shootdown,” National Intelligence Daily,
February 29, 1996, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room,
Document No. 0000957792, http://www.foia.cia.gov :
“Cuba: Behind the Shootdown,” National Intelligence
Daily, March 2, 1996, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading
Room, Document No. 0000957793,

http://www.foia.cia.gov .

49. For radio scanner usage in Haiti, see CALL,
Operation Uphold Democracy Initial Impressions: Haiti
D-20 to D+ 40, December 1994, vol. I, p. 93; CALL,
Operation Uphold Democracy Initial Impressions: Haiti

D-20 to D+ 40, April 1995, vol. 2, p. 175, both in the
library of CALL, Fort Leavenworth, KS. For Bosnia, see
Larry K. Wentz, ed.. Lessons from Bosnia: The IFOR
Expen Washington, DC: National Strategic Studies
Institute, 1997), p. 105.

50. This conclusion is drawn from a review of a large
number of declassified “lessons learned” reports currently
on file at CALL, in Fort Leavenworth, KS, as well as
unclassified papers written by army intelligence officers
for the U.S. Army Command and Staff College at Fort
Leaven-worth. The most incisive of these studies is David
W. Becker, Coming in from the Cold War: Defense
Humint Services Support to Military Operations Other
than War(¥ ovi Leavenworth, KS: U.S. Army Command
and General Staff College, 2000).

51. Confidential interviews; Alfred Monteiro, Jr.,
“Mustering the Force: Cryptologic Support to Military
Operations,” Defense Intelligence Journal, vol. 4, no. 2
(Fall 1995): pp. 75-76; General Accounting Office,
NSI AD-96-6, Personnel Practices at CIA, NSA and DIA
Compared with Those of Other Agencies, March 1996, p.
5.

52. Confidential interviews.

53. Defense Department, Office of the Inspector General,
Report No. 96-03, Final Report on the Verification

Inspection of the National Security Agency, February 13,
1996, p. 2, DOD FOIA.

54. U.S. House of Representatives, Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence, IC21: Intelligence Community
in the 21st Century, 104th Congress, 1st session, 1996,
pp. 120-21; Commission on the Roles and Capabilities of
the United States Intelligence Community, Preparing for
the 21st Century: An Appraisal of U.S.
Intelligence(Washmgton, DC: GPO, 1996), p. 125. “Bite
us in the ass” quote from confidential interview.

55. Confidential interviews.

56. Minihan background from USAF biography, Lt.
General Kenneth A. Minihan, U.S. Air Force, Office of
Public Affairs, September 1995; “Agency Welcomes New
Director, Lt. General Kenneth A. Minihan,” NSA
Newsletter, April 1996, p. 2, NSA FOIA; R. Jeffrey
Smith, “Military Men Named to Top Intelligence Posts,”
Washington Post, January 25, 1996; Tom Bowman, “Air
Force General to Head NSA,” Baltimore Sun, January 25,
1996; “Minihan Biography,” Spokesman, June 1993, p. 9,
AIA FOIA.

57. NSA OH- 1999-21, oral history. Interview with Lt.
General Kenneth A. Minihan, USAF (Ret.), March 8,
1999, p. 1, NSA FOIA.

58. George Tenet, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at

the C/v4 (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007), p.
108.

59. Minihan’s “pitch” for more money is contained in Lt.
General Ken Minihan, USAF, DIR-540, NSA/CSS
Position Report, November 9, 1998, NSA FOIA.

60. U.S. House of Representatives, Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence, Report 105-508, Intelligence
Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1999, 105th Congress,
2nd session. May 5, 1998, pp. 9-11; Walter Pincus,
“Panel Ties NSA Funds to Changes at Agency,”
Washington Post, May 7, 1998; interview with John
Minis.

61. NSA/CSS, “National Cryptologic Strategy for the 21st
Century,” June 1996, NSA FOIA; confidential interviews.

62. Confidential interview. Minihan’s briefing is
contained in Lt. General Ken Minihan, USAF, DIR- 152,
PowerPoint presentation, “NSA Integration with Military
Operations,” March 13, 1997, NSA FOIA.

63. Frank J. Cilluffo, Ronald A. Marks, and George C.
Salmoiraghi, “The Use and Limits of U.S. Intelligence,”
Washington Quarterly, vol. 25, no. 1 (Winter 2002): p.
62.

64. Bill Gertz, “Bin Laden’s Several Links to Terrorist
Units Known,” Washington Times, August 23, 1998. See

also Bill Gertz, Breakdown: How America ’s Intelligence
Failures Led to September 7 7 (Washington, DC: Regnery
Publishing, 2002), pp. 7, 9. The Gertz 1998 article
specifically cites NS A SIGINT intercepts for the
intelligence about these phone calls. The 2002 book does
not. For Alexandria, VA, indictment, see FBI, press
release and attached indictment, June 21, 2001,

http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/pressrel01/khobar.htm.

65. Confidential interviews.

66. Trial transcript. May 1, 2001, in 98 Cr. 1028, United
States of America v. Usama bin Laden et al, pp. 5287-92,
U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York;
Nick Fielding and Dipesh Gadhery, “The Next Target:
Britain?,” Sunday Times, March 24, 2002. See also
government exhibits 48 and 321, attached to trial
transcript, April 4, 2001, in United States of America v.
Usama bin Laden et ah

67. Anonymous [Michael Scheuer], “How Notio Catch a
Terrorist,” Atlantic Monthly, December 2004, p. 50.

68. Confidential interviews; DCI Counterterrorist Center,
Bin Laden Preparing to Hijack US Aircraft and Other
Attacks, December 4, 1998, CIA Electronic FOIA
Reading Room, Document No. 0001110635,
http://www.foia.cia.gov : Walter Pincus and Vernon Loeb,
“CIA Blocked Two Attacks Last Year,” Washington Post,

August 11, 1998; “Islam Rising,” Atlantic Monthly,
February 17, 1999,

http:www.theatlantic.com/unbound/bookauth/ba9902 1 7.ht

“Terrorism Directed at America,” ERRI Daily
Intelligence Report, February 24, 1999,

http://www.emergency.com/1999/bnldn-pg.htm : Walter
Pincus, “CIA Touts Successes in Fighting Terrorism,”
Washington Post, November 1, 2002.

69. For NS A designating al Qaeda its top target in the
aftermath of the East Africa bombings, see U.S. Senate,
Report No. 107-351, and U.S. House of Representatives,
Report No. 107-792, report of the U.S. Senate Select
Committee in Intelligence and U.S. House Permanent
Select Committee on Intelligence, Joint Inquiry into
Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the
Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001, 107th Congress,
2nd session, December 2002 (declassified and released in
July 2003), p. 377. The 9/11 Commission identified a
specific Washington r/me^article as having alerted bin
Laden to the fact that NS A was monitoring his phone
calls. The article in question was Martin Sieff, “Terrorist
Is Driven by Hatred for U.S., Israel,” Washington Times,
August 21, 1998. See National Commission on Terrorist
Attacks upon the United States, The 9/11 Commission
Report: Final Report of the National Commission on
Terrorist Attacks upon the United States(f\QSN York: W.
W. Norton, 2004), p. 127.

70. Vernon Loeb, “General Named to Head NS A,”

Washington Post, February 25, 1999; “DIRNSA’s Desk”
and “Agency Welcomes New Director Lieutenant General
Michael V. Hayden,” NSA Newsletter, May 1999, pp. 3-
4, NSA FOIA. A very readable rendition of Hayden’s
days in the former Yugoslavia in the mid-1990s can be
found in Michael V. Hayden, “Warfighters and
Intelligence: One Team — One Fight,” Defense

Intelligence Journal, vol. 4, no. 2 (Fall 1995): pp. 17-30.

71. U.S. Naval Academy, PowerPoint presentation,
“Information Warfare Information Operations,” undated,
http://prodevweb.prodev.usna.edu/SeaNav/ns3 1 0/Web%2(

72. Confidential interview.

73. NSA Scientific Advisory Board, Panel on
Conventional Collection, Report to the Director
NSA/CSS, March 9, 1999, NSA FOIA; NSA Scientific
Advisory Board, Panel on Digital Network Intelligence
(DNI) (formerly “C2C”), Report to the Director, June 28,
1999, NSA FOIA; memorandum, Taylor to DIRNSA,
Thoughts on Strategic Issues for the Institution, April 9,
1999, p. 3. The author is grateful to Dr. Jeffrey T.
Richelson for making available a copy of this document.

74. NSA/CSS, New Enterprise Team (NETeam)
recommendations. The Director's Work Plan for Change,
October 1, 1999, NSA FOIA; NSA/CSS, external team

report, A Management Review for the Director, NS A,
October 22, 1999, NS A FOIA.

75. DIRgram-00, “100 Days of Change,” November 10,

1999; DIRgram-01, “Change, Candor, and Honesty,”
November 15, 1999; DIRgram-02; “Our New Executive
Leadership Team,” November 16, 1999; DIRgram-05,
“Expanded Role for Our Executive Director,” November
19, 1999; DIRgram-06, “Deputy Chief Central Security
Service,” November 22, 1999; DIRgram-07, “Getting Our
Financial House in Order,” November 23, 1999;

DIRgram-08, “Bringing in Outside Help,” November 24,
1999; DIRgram-11, “Major Dollar Decisions,” December
1, 1999; DIRgram-28, “Resuming the Journey,” January
3, 2000, all NSA FOIA; NSA/CSS, Transition 200 f
December 2000, p. 19. The author is grateful to Dr.
Jeffrey T. Richelson for making a copy of this document
available. Hayden announcement quote from “DIRNSA’s
Desk,” NSA Newsletter, January 2000, p. 3, NSA FOIA.

76. Seymour M. Hersh, “The Intelligence Gap: How the
Digital Age Left Our Spies out in the Cold,” New Yorker,
December 6, 1999.

77. Diane Mezzanotte, Infocentricity and Beyond: How
the Intelligence Community Can Survive the Challenge oj
Emerging Technologies, Shrinking Budgets, and Growing
SuspicionsQAQw^ovi, RI: Naval War College, 2000), p. 2.

78. NS A/CSS, Transition 2001, December 2000, p. 33.
See also John McWethy, “Major Failure: NS A Confirms
Serious Computer Problem,” ABC News, January 29,
2000; Walter Pincus, “NS A System Inoperative for Four
Days,” Washington Post, January 30, 2000; Walter
Pincus, “NS A System Crash Raises Hill Worries,”
Washington Post, February 2, 2000; Laura Sullivan,
“Computer Failure at NS A Irks Intelligence Panels,”
Baltimore Sun, February 2, 2000.

79. For the widespread practice by Yemeni tribesmen of

taking hostages in order to obtain political or economic
concessions from the Yemeni government, see Director of
Central Intelligence, National Intelligence Estimate 94-
33/11, Global Humanitarian Emergencies, 1995, vol. 2,
December 1994, p. 16, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading
Room, Document No. 0000619031,

http://www.foia.cia.gov .

80. Details of al-Hada’s background from confidential
interviews with U.S. and Yemeni intelligence officials.

81. Government exhibits 48 and 321, attached to trial
transcript, April 4, 2001, in 98 Cr. 1028, United States oj
America v. Usama bin Laden et ah, U.S. District Court
for the Southern District of New York. See also Fielding
and Gadhery, “The Next Target: Britain?”; Rohan
Gunaratna, Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network oj
rerror(New York: Berkley Books, 2003), p. 188.

82. Al-’Owhali was extradited to the United States
tostand trial for murder. In 2001, he and three other
defendants were convicted of murder and sentenced to life
in prison without parole. He is currently serving his life
sentence at the ADX Florence Supermax prison.

83. For use of the phrase “suspected terrorist facility in
the Middle East,” see U.S. Senate, Report No. 107-351,
and U.S. House of Representatives, Report No. 107-792,
report of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence and U.S. House Permanent Select Committee
on Intelligence, Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community
Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks oj
September 11, 200 f 107th Congress, 2nd session,
December 2002 (declassified and released in July 2003),
pp. 155-57. For general examination of the role played by
al-Hada, see Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman, “The
Hijackers We Let Escape,” Newsweek, June 10, 2002, p.
6 .

84. U.S. Senate, Report No. 107-351, and U.S. House of
Representatives, Report No. 107-792, report of the U.S.
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and U.S. House
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Joint
Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and
After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001, 107th
Congress, 2nd session, December 2002 (declassified and
released in July 2003), p. 1 1.

85. “Citing Threats, Britain Joins U.S. in Closing
Embassies in Africa,” CNN, June 25, 1999; David
Phinney, “Fund-Raising for Terrorism,” ABC News, July
9, 1999; John McWethy, “U.S. Tries to Get Bin Laden,”
ABC News, July 9, 1999; Barbara Starr, “Bin Laden’s
Plans,” ABC News, July 16, 1999.

86. U.S. Senate, Report No. 107-351, and U.S. House of

Representatives, report No. 107-792, report of the U.S.
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and U.S. House
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Joint

Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and
After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 200 f 107th
Congress, 2nd session, December 2002 (declassified and
released in July 2003), p. 11; National Commission, pp.
156-57.

87. U.S. Senate, Report No. 107-351, and U.S. House of

Representatives, Report No. 107-792, report of the U.S.
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and U.S. House
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Joint

Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and
After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 200 f 107th
Congress, 2nd session, December 2002 (declassified and
released in July 2003), pp. 12, 143-44; 9/11 Commission,
9/11 Commission Report, pp. 181, 353.

88. 9/11 Commission, 9/11 Commission Report, pp. 215-

18.

89. Justice Department, Office of the Inspector General,
Special Report: A Review of the FBFs Handling oj
Intelligence Information Related to the September 11
Attacks, chap. 5, part B, “Hazmi and Mihdhar in San
Diego,” sec. 3, Hazmi and Mihdhar’ s Communications,
November 2004 (released Jan. 2006); U.S. Senate, Report
No. 107-351, and U.S. House of Representatives, Report
No. 107-792, report of the U.S. Senate Select Committee
on Intelligence and U.S. House Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence, Joint Inquiry into Intelligence
Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist
Attacks of September 11, 2001, 107th Congress, 2nd
session, December 2002 (declassified and released in July
2003), pp. 16-17, 157.

90. U.S. Senate, Report No. 107-351, and U.S. House of
Representatives, Report No. 107-792, report of the U.S.
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and U.S. House
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Joint
Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and
After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001, 107th
Congress, 2nd session, December 2002 (declassified and
released in July 2003), pp. 135, 157; 9/11 Commission,
9/11 Commission Report, p. 222.

91. Bill Gertz, “NSA’s Warning Arrived Too Late to Save
the Cole,” Washington Times, October 25, 2000.

12: Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory

L Dr. David A. Hatch, Presidential Transition 2001: NSA
Briefs a New Administration(¥ ort Meade, MD: Center for
Cryptologic History, 2004), NSA FOIA. The author is
grateful to Dr. Jeffrey T. Richelson for making a copy of
this report available.

Z NSA analysts quote from Joint Inquiry Staff, House
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and Senate
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Eleanor
Hill, Staff Director, Joint Inquiry Staff Statement:
Hearing on the Intelligence Community’s Response to
Past Terrorist Attacks Against the United States from
February 1993 to September 200 f October 8, 2002.
Hayden comment from “Statement for the Record by Lt.
General Michael V. Hayden, USAF, Director NS A/CSS
Before the Joint Inquiry of the Senate Select Committee
on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence,” October 17, 2002.

T U.S. Senate, Report No. 107-351, and U.S. House of
Representatives, Report No. 107-792, report of the U.S.
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and U.S. House
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Joint
Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and
After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 200 f 107th
Congress, 2nd session, December 2002 (declassified and
released in July 2003), p. 8; James Risen and Stephen

Engelberg, “Failure to Heed Signs of Change in Terror
Goals,” New York Times, October 14, 2001.

4, Joint Inquiry Staff, House Permanent Select Committee
on Intelligence and Senate Permanent Select Committee
on Intelligence, Eleanor Hill, Staff Director, Joint Inquiry
Staff, Joint Inquiry Staff Statement, part I, September 18,
2002, p. 20; “Statement for the Record by Lt. General
Michael V. Hayden, USAF, Director NSA/CSS Before
the Joint Inquiry of the Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee
on Intelligence,” October 17, 2002, p. 4; U.S. Senate,
Report No. 107-351, and U.S. House of Representatives,
Report No. 107-792, report of the U.S. Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence and U.S. House Permanent
Select Committee on Intelligence, Joint Inquiry into
Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the
Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001, 107th Congress,
2nd session, December 2002 (declassified and released in
July 2003), pp. 7, 203. See also Bob Woodward, State oj
Denial: Bush at War, part 3 (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 2006), p. 50; James Risen, “In Hindsight, CIA
Sees Flaws That Hindered Efforts on Terrorism,” New
York Times, October 7, 2001.

^ Mary Dejevsky, “US Forces on High Alert After Threat
of Attack,” Independent, June 23, 2001; Walter Pincus,
“CIA Touts Successes in Fighting Terrorism,”

Washington Post, November 1, 2002.

6^ U.S. Senate, Report No. 107-351, and U.S. House of
Representatives, Report No. 107-792, report of the U.S.
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and U.S. House
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Joint
Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and
After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001, 107th
Congress, 2nd session, December 2002 (declassified and
released in July 2003), p. 7; National Commission on
Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, The 9/11
Commission Report: Final Report of the National
Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United
States(HQs^ York: W. W. Norton, 2004), p. 257;
Woodward, State of Denial, p. 50.

T Woodward, State of Denial, pp. 50-51; confidential
interviews.

L U.S. Senate, Report No. 107-351, and U.S. House of
Representatives Report No. 107-792, report of the U.S.
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and U.S. House
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Joint
Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and
After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001, 107th
Congress, 2nd session, December 2002 (declassified and
released in July 2003), p. 36.

9^ Joint Inquiry Staff, House Permanent Select Committee

on Intelligence and Senate Permanent Select Committee
on Intelligence, Eleanor Hill, Staff Director, Joint Inquiry
Staff Statement: Hearing on the Intelligence Community ’s
Response to Past Terrorist Attacks Against the United
States from February 1993 to September 200 f October 8,
2002; 9/11 Commission, 9/11 Commission Report, pp.
87-88.

10. Confidential interview with senior NS A official, 2003.

11. Woodward, State of Denial, p. 51; George Tenet, At
the Center of the Storm: My Years at the C/v4 (New York:
HarperCollins Publishers, 2007), p. 154; Pincus, “CIA
Touts Successes.”

12. Tenet, At the Center, p. 154.

13. “The Proof They Did Not Reveal,” Sunday Times,
October 7, 2001; “Early Warnings: Pre-Sept. 11 Cautions
Went Unheeded,” ABCNews, February 18, 2002.

14. Raymond Bonner and John Tagliabue,
“Eavesdropping, U.S. Allies See New Terror Attack,”
New York Times, October 21, 2001; Neil A. Lewis and
David Johnston, “Jubilant Calls on Sept. 1 1 Led to FBI
Arrests,” New York Times, October 28, 2001.

15. U.S. Senate, Report No. 107-351, and U.S. House of
Representatives, Report No. 107-792, report of the U.S.
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and U.S. House

Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Joint
Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and
After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 200 f 107th
Congress, 2nd session, December 2002 (declassified and
released in July 2003), p. 32.

16. The existence of these intercepts was first disclosed in
Rowan Scarborough, “Intercepts Foretold of ‘Big Attack,’
” Washington Times, September 22, 2001. Details of these
messages are contained in James Risen and David
Johnston, “Agency Is Under Scrutiny for Overlooked
Messages,” New York Times, June 20, 2002; Walter
Pincus and Dana Priest, “NS A Intercepts on Eve of 9/11
Sent a Warning,” Washington Post, June 20, 2002; Scott
Shane and Ariel Sabar, “Coded Warnings Became Clear
Only in Light of Sept. 1 1 Attacks,” Baltimore Sun, June
20 , 2002 .

17. For 22,000 NS A employees, see Advanced
Infrastructure Management Technologies (AIMTech)
report. Integrated Solid Waste Management Plan: Fort
George G. Meade, Maryland, January 2002, p. 29. The
report reveals that 44 percent of the 50,075 persons
working at Fort Meade (i.e., 22,000 personnel) worked for
NS A. The tightened security restrictions at Fort Meade
were publicly announced on August 15, 2001, for which
see Steve Vogel, “Region’s Army Posts to Restrict Public
Access,” Washington Post, August 15, 2001.

18. The size of the NS A Campus and number of buildings
from “Keeping NSA Clean,” NSA Newsletter, June 1994,
p. 8; “Drawing Down for the Future: NSA Consolidates
Its Resources,” NSA Newsletter, August 1994, pp. 8-9;
“Facilities Maintenance: A Look at Building
Management,” NSA Newsletter, February 1995, p. 9, all
NSA FOIA. The size of NSA’s security force from
“Protective Services Celebrates 10th Anniversary,” NSA
Newsletter, October 1996, p. 8, NSA FOIA. “Largest
parking lot in the world” from Gary W. O’Shaughnessy,
“The Structure and Missions of Air Force Intelligence
Command,” p. 50, Seminar on Intelligence, Command
and Control, Center for Information Policy Research,
Harvard University, August 1994.

19. 1st Lt. Breton Lewellen, “Medina Regional SIGINT
Operations Center Strengthens Joint Missions,”
Spokesman, February 1999, p. 8, AIA FOIA.

20. Confidential interviews.

21. Tom Pelton, “Terrorism Strikes America: Baltimore

Travelers Get Left in the Lurch,” Baltimore Sun,
September 12, 2001; Col. Michael J. Stewart,

“Community Urged to Be Patient, Strengthen Resolve,”
Soundoff, September 20, 2001.

22. General Michael V. Hayden, Deputy Director of
National Intelligence, address to the National Press Club,

“What American Intelligence and Especially the NS A
Have Been Doing to Defend the Nation,” January 23,
2006; General Michael V. Hayden, Director of the Central
Intelligence Agency, address at the Duquesne University
Commencement Ceremony, May 4, 2007, Pittsburgh, PA.

23. The casualties included more than 2,600 dead in the
World Trade Center, 125 in the Pentagon, and the 246
passengers and crew members of the four commercial
aircraft.

24. Stephanie Desmon, “Frightened Parents, Confusion
Prompt Schools to Close Early,” Baltimore Sun,
September 12, 2001; confidential interviews with NSA
staff members.

25. Confidential interview. For thirty analysts and
reporters at NSOC, see Bob Woodward, Plan oj
AttackQSQ^ York: Simon and Schuster, 2004), p. 215.

26. Confidential interview.

27. A biography for Caches, who since February 2006 has

held the position of assistant administrator for intelligence
and analysis at the Transportation Security
Administration, can be found at

http ://www. tsa. gov/who_we_are/people/bios/bill_gachesJ

28. “Statement for the Record by Ft. General Michael V.
Hayden, USAF, Director NS A/CSS Before the Joint

Inquiry of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
and the House Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence,” October 17, 2002, p. 2.

29. Tyler Drumheller, On the 5rmA:(New York: Carroll
and Graf Publishers, 2006), pp. 36-37.

30. David Martin, “Plans for Iraq Attack Began on 9/11,”

CBS News, September 4, 2002,

http ://www. cbsnews . com/ stories/2002/09/ 04/september 1 1 /

31. 9/11 Commission, 9/11 Commission Report, pp. 331-

32.

32. Sharon Gaudin, “The Terrorist Network,” Network
World, November 26, 2001; Paul Kaihla, “Weapons of
the Secret War,” Business 2.0 Magazine, November 2001;
“Taliban Outlaws Net in Afghanistan,” Reuters, July 17,
2001; a confidential interview.

33. For general state of NSA’s capabilities against
Afghanistan, confidential interviews. For lack of linguists
at NS A who could speak the languages spoken in
Afghanistan, see U.S. Senate, Report No. 107-351, and
U.S. House of Representatives Report No. 107-792,
report of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence and U.S. House Permanent Select Committee
on Intelligence, Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community
Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks oj
September 11, 2001, 107th Congress, 2nd session.

December 2002 (declassified and released in July 2003),
p. 336.

34. Confidential interview with former CIA official. See
also Steve Coll, “Flawed Ally Was Hunt’s Best Hope,”
Washington Post, February 23, 2004.

35. Stephen P. Perkins, “Projecting Intelligence,
Surveillance, and Reconnaissance in Support of the
Interim Brigade Combat Team,” in Williamson Murray,
ed.. Army Transformation: A View from the Army War
Co//ege(Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army War College, 2001), p.
290; John F. Berry, “The 513th Military Intelligence
Brigade in Support of Operation Enduring Freedom,”
Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin, April-June
2002, p. 4; Major Michael C. Kasales, U.S. Army, “The
Reconnaissance Squadron and ISR Operations,” Military
Review, May-June 2002, pp. 53-56.

36. Colonel Brian L. Tarbet, Utah ARNG, and Lt. Colonel
Ralph R. Steinke, USA, “Linguists in the Army: Paradise
Lost or Paradise Regained?,” Military Intelligence
Professional Bulletin, October- December 1999, p. 6. For
the 50 percent shortfall of Arabic linguists, see U.S.
General Accounting Office, GAO-02-375, Foreign
Languages: Human Capital Approach Needed to Correct
Staffing and Proficiency Shortfalls, January 2002, p. 7.

37. Lt. Colonel Lisa C. Bennett, USA, Increasing

Intelligence Support to the Long /^ar(Carlisle Barracks,
PA: U.S. Army War College, 2007), pp. 3^.

38. Harold E. Raugh, Jr., “The Origins of the
Transformation of the Defense Language Program,”
Applied Language Learning, vol. 16, no. 2 (2006): pp. 3-
5; PowerPoint presentation, “98G Cryp-tologic Linguist
Locations by Language,” 2002. This unclassified
document, which formerly resided on the Web site of the
U.S. Army’s Personnel Command, has since been
removed.

39. Confidential interview. For Fremont serving as a
recruiting ground for Afghan language teachers for the
U.S. Army, see Clifford F. Porter, Asymmetrical Warfare,
Transformation, and Foreign Language Capabilityifoxi
Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2003),

p. 11.

40. Berry, “513th Military Intelligence Brigade,” p. 4. For
NS A teams leaving from BWI airport for the Middle East,
see Laura Sullivan, “National Security Agency Retreats
into Secrecy Shell,” Baltimore Sun, November 3, 2001.

41. Confidential interviews.

42. Confidential interview.

43. Benjamin S. Lambeth, Air Power Against Terror:
America 's Conduct of Operation Enduring

FreeJom(Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 2005), p.
xvi.

44. “Air Raid Cuts Afghan Capital Telephone Network,”
Reuters, October 14, 2001; Rahimullah Yusufzai,
“Taliban Command Structure Crumbles,” News: Jang,
December 3, 2001; confidential interview.

45. Confidential interviews.

46. For importance of the Fifty-fifth Brigade, see Ali A.
Jalali, “Afghanistan: The Anatomy of an Ongoing
ConiMci,'' Parameters, vol. 31, no. 1 (Spring 2001): p. 89;
“Pentagon Sets Sights on Taliban’s Elite Brigade 55,”
AFP, October 15, 2001; Rory McCarthy, Helen Carter,
and Richard Norton-Taylor, “The Elite Force Who Are
Ready to Die,” U.K. Guardian, October 27, 2001; Daniel
Eisenberg, “Secrets of Brigade 055,” Time, October 29,
2001; Romesh Ratnesar, “Into the Fray,” Time, October
29, 2001.

47. Confidential interview.

48. Unclassified Documents from Marine Task Force 58 ’s

Operations in Afghanistan: Forming: 27 October to 5
November 2001, February 2002,

http ://www. strategypage.com/articles/tf5 8/ forming, asp .

49. “ ‘No More Retreat,’ Taleban Troops Told,” BBC,
November 13, 2001, /world/south_asia/1654256.stm.;

William Branigin, “Afghan Rebels Seize Control of
Kabul,” Washington Post, November 14, 2001; Jonathan
Steele, “Stand and Fight, Fleeing Taliban Told,” U.K.
Guardian, November 14, 2001.

50. Vernon Loeb and Bradley Graham, “Special Forces
Block Traffic in Search for bin Laden,” Washington Post,
November 15, 2001.

51. Confidential interviews. See also “Omar ‘Disappears’
as Taliban Surrender Ends,” Reuters, December 7, 2001.

52. For SIGINT teams searching for bin Laden, see
confidential interviews with former military intelligence
officers; Michael Smith, Killer Elite: The Inside Story oj
America ’s Most Secret Special Operations Team(hondom
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006), pp. 224-25.

53. Open source discussion of the mission and functions
of Grey Fox can be found in Peter Beaumont, “ ‘Grey
Fox’ Closes in on Prize Scalp: Saddam,” U.K. Observer,
June 22, 2003; Rowan Scarborough, “Agencies United to
Find Bin Laden,” Washington Times, March 15, 2004. For
mentions of the U.S. Army Security Coordination
Detachment, see Defense Department, Under Secretary of
Defense for Personnel and Readiness, Defense Manpower
Requirements Report for Fiscal Year 2006, July 2005, p.
65; “USATST Recruiting Effort,” Fort Huachuca Scout,
September 19, 2002, p. 6.

54. Philip Smucker, “How bin Laden Got Away,”
Christian Science Monitor, March 4, 2002.

55. U.S. Special Operations Command, U.S. Special
Operations Command History: 1987-2007(}AdicT>i\\ Air
Force Base, FL: USSOCOM History Office, 2007), p. 94.

56. Charles H. Briscoe, Richard L. Kiper, James A.
Schroeder, and Kalev I. Sepp, U.S. Army Special
Operations in Afghanistan(Bo\x\dQV, CO: Paladin Press,
2006), p. 213; U.S. Special Operations Command, Special
Operations Command History, p. 93.

57. Briscoe, Kiper, Schroeder, and Sepp, Army Special
Operations, pp. 214-15. The mission of the Green Beret
SIGINT team from confidential interview.

58. Michael R. Gordon and Eric Schmitt, “U.S. Force
May Search Tora Bora for bin Laden,” New York Times,
December 19, 2001.

59. Confidential interviews. See also Rory McCarthy,
“Radio Picks Up Voice of bin Laden,” U.K. Observer,
December 16, 2001.

60. Barton Gellman and Thomas E. Ricks, “U.S.
Concludes Bin Laden Escaped at Tora Bora Fight,”
Washington Post, April 17, 2002.

61. U.S. Special Operations Command, Special

Operations Command History, p. 98. See also Peter
Bergen, “War of Error: How Osama bin Laden Beat
George W. Bush,” New Republic, October 22, 2007.

62. Patrick Healy and Farah Stockman, “Taliban Flee
Kandahar,” Boston Globe, December 8, 2001.

63. Armando J. Ramirez, From Bosnia to Baghdad: The
Evolution of US Army Special Forces from 1995-
2004(MontQXQy , CA: Naval Postgraduate School, 2004),
p. 65.

64. Tony Karon, “Why the Bad Guys Get Away in
Afghanistan,” Time, January 8, 2002.

65. Confidential interviews. See also James Risen and
Dexter Filkins, “Qaeda Fighters Said to Return to
Afghanistan,” New York Times, September 10, 2002;
Evan Thomas, “The Ongoing Hunt for Osama bin
Laden,” Newsweek, September 3, 2007.

66. Steve Vogel, “Rumsfeld Doubts Bin Laden Escaped,”
Washington Post, January 17, 2002.

67. Mark Mazzetti, “On the Ground: How Special Ops
Forces Are Hunting al Qaeda,” U.S. News & World
Report, February 17, 2002.

68. Bergen, “War of Error.”

13: A Mountain out of a Molehill

L Bradley Graham, “Unfinished Business in Proxy War,”
Washington Post, January 6, 2002; Tony Karon, “Why
the Bad Guys Get Away in Afghanistan,” Time, January
8, 2002; Rory McCarthy, “Fighters Who Slipped Through
the Net,” U.K. Guardian, February 13, 2002; William R.
Hawkins, “What Not to Learn from Afghanistan,”
Parameters, vol. 32, no. 2 (Summer 2002): p. 30.

Z Confidential interviews with NS A and U.S. military
intelligence officials; Battalion Landing Team 3/6, 26th
Marine Expeditionary Unit, Command Chronology for
Period 1 July 2001-28 February 2002, sec. 2, March 1,
2002, p. 16, Marine Corps Historical Center, Quantico,
VA. For confirmation by Defense Department officials
that the U.S. military was continuing to detect Taliban
usage of satellite telephones, see also Jim Garamone,
“Central Command Can Call More Troops If Needed,”
American Forces Press Ser vice, January 25, 2002. For
resumption of Taliban attacks in southern Afghanistan,
see “Afghan Fighters Seal Border Crossing,” Associated
Press, January 11, 2002; Richard Lacayo, “The Deadly
Hunt,” Time, January 14, 2002; Eric Schmitt, “U.S. Says
Tribal Leaders Balk at Aiding Search for Taliban,” New
York Times, January 17, 2002; Tim McGirk, “Where
Danger Lurks,” Time, January 27, 2002; Philip Smucker,
“After Tora Bora, US Hunts Alone,” Christian Science
Monitor, January 28, 2002.

3^ Barton Gellman and Dafna Linzer, “Afghanistan, Iraq:
Two Wars Collide,” Washington Post, October 22, 2004.
For withdrawal of the 513th Military Intelligence Brigade
and its SIGINT units, see John F. Berry, “The 513th
Military Intelligence Brigade in Support of Operation
Enduring Freedom,” Military Intelligence Professional
Bulletin, April-June 2002; Spc. Leslie Pearson,
“Longtime Reservist Recalls Two-Year Activation,”
Mirage, vol. 1, 4th Quarter ed. (2003): p. 17; “513th
Military Intelligence Brigade,” Mirage, vol. 1, 4th Quarter
ed. (2003): p. 20; confidential interviews.

4, Sean Naylor, Not a Good Day to Die: The Untold Story
of Operation AnacondaQSosM York: Berkley Books,
2005), pp. 41-42.

^ Naylor, Not a Good Day, p. 75; Rowan Scarborough,
“Military Officers Criticize Rush to Use Ground Troops,”
Washington Times, March 7, 2002; Richard T. Cooper,
Geoffrey Mohan, and Rone Tempest, “Fierce Fight in
Afghan Valley Tests U.S. Soldiers and Strategy,” Los
Angeles Times, March 24, 2002; confidential interview.

C The best single description of Operation Anaconda and
its aftermath can be found in Naylor, Not a Good Day.

T Bruce D. MacLachlan, Lt. Colonel, U.S. Marine Corps,
Operational Art in the Counter-Terror War in
AfghanistanQAQSM^ovi, RI: Naval War College, 2002), p.

17; Stephen Biddle, Afghanistan and the Future oj
Warfare: Implications for Army and Defense

Po//cy(Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, November

2002) , pp. 20, 31; oral history. Interview with Major
Jason Warner, third interview, August 21, 2007, p. 8,
Combat Studies Institute, Fort Leavenworth, KS.

L Accounts of Operation Anaconda differ markedly as to
whether the operation was a success or a failure. For a
generally rosy assessment see Dr. Richard Kugler,
Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan: A Case Study oj
Adaptation in Washington, DC: National Defense

University, Center for Technology and National Security
Policy, 2007). Critical assessments of U.S. military per
for mance during Operation Anaconda can be found in
Naylor, Not a Good Day', Bradley J. Armstrong,
Rebuilding Afghanistan: Counterinsurgency and

Reconstruction in Operation Enduring

FreedomjfAoniQXQy , CA: U.S. Naval Postgraduate School,

2003) , p. 7; Lt. Commander Todd Marzano, USN,
Criticisms Associated with Operation Anaconda: Can
Long-Distance Leadership Be Effective? RI:
Naval War College, October 23, 2006); Scarborough,
“Military Officers Criticize Rush”; Elaine Grossman,
“Was Operation Anaconda Ill-Fated from the Start? Army
Analyst Blames Afghan Battle Failings on Bad Command
Set-up,” Inside the Pentagon, July 29, 2004, p. 1; Elaine
Grossman, “Anaconda: Object Lesson in Poor Planning or

Triumph of Improvisation?,” Inside the Pentagon, August
12, 2004, p. 1.

9^ “Prepared Statement of General Tommy R. Franks,
Commander, U.S. Central Command Before the U.S.
Senate Armed Services Committee,” July 31, 2002, p. 6;
General Tommy Franks (USA, Ret.), American
Soldier(HQs^ York: Regan Books, 2004), p. 379.

10. Confidential interviews with U.S. Army officers
involved in the operation. See also Paul Haven, “Top
General in Afghanistan Says al-Qaida and Taliban Forces
Are Trying to Regroup in East,” Associated Press, March
20, 2002; Anthony Lloyd, “Marines Start Sub-Zero Hunt
for al-Qaeda,” U.K. Times, April 17, 2002; Rick Scavetta,
“Military Interrogators in Afghanistan Use Detective
Work in Mental Chess Game,” Stars and Stripes, April
30, 2002.

11. Confidential interviews.

12. Ibid.

13. Karl Vick and Kamran Khan, “Raid Netted Top A1
Qaeda Leader,” Washington Post, April 2, 2002; Aftab
Ahmad, “Osama in Faisalabad?,” The Nation(LahoYQ ed.),
April 8, 2002, FBIS-NEW-2002-0408; Ijaz Hashmat, “US
Intercepted Satellite Phone Message That Led to Raid in
Faisalabad,” Khabrain, April 9, 2002, FBIS-NES-2002-
0409.

14. Jonathan Fowler, “Al-Zarqawi Used Swiss Cell
Phone,” Associated Press, November 25, 2004.

15. Rory McCarthy and Julian Borger, “Secret Arrest of
Leading al-Qaida Fugitive,” U.K. Guardian, September 4,
2002.

16. Jason Burke, “Brutal Gun Battle That Crushed 9/11
Terrorists,” U.K. Observer, September 15, 2002; Nick
Fielding, “Phone Call Gave Away A1 Qaida Hideout,”
U.K. Sunday Times, September 15, 2001; Rory McCarthy,
“Investigators Question Key September 1 1 Suspect,” U.K.
Guardian, September 16, 2002; Nick Fielding, “War on
Terror: Knocking on Al-Qaeda’s Door,” U.K. Sunday
Times, September 22, 2002.

17. Confidential interview. See also James Risen and Eric
Lichtblau, “Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without
Courts,” New York Times, December 16, 2005.

18. For killing of al-Harethi, see “U.S. Kills al-Qaeda
Suspects in Yemen,” Associated Press, November 5,
2002. For Hayden-Rumsfeld interchange, see Dana Priest
and Ann Scott Tyson, “Bin Laden Trail ‘Stone Cold,’ ”
Washington Post, September 10, 2006.

19. Colum Lynch, “US Used UN to Spy on Iraq, Aides
Say,” Boston Globe, January 6, 1999; Barton Gellman,
“Annan Suspicious of UNSCOM Probe,” Washington

Post, January 6, 1999; Bruce W. Nelan, “Bugging
Saddam,” Time, January 18, 1999; Seymour M. Hersh,
“Saddam’s Best Friend,” New Yorker, April 5, 1999, pp.
32, 35; David Wise, “Fall Guy,” Washingtonian, July
1999, pp. 42-43.

20. Charles Duelfer, Special Advisor to the Director of
Central Intelligence, Comprehensive Report of the Special
Advisor to the DCI on Iraqi WMD, vol. 1, chap. 2,
September 30, 2004, pp. 108-09, CIA Electronic FOIA
Reading Room, Document No. 0001156395,
http://www.foia.cia.gov : Bill Gertz, “China Fortifying
Iraq’s Air-Defense System,” Washington Times, February
20 , 2001 .

21. Charles Aldinger, “Western Warplanes Hit Iraqi
Defenses,” Reuters, August 8, 2001.

22. Mohammed Hayder Sadeq and Sabah al-Anbaki,
“Cell Phone Service Is Spotty, But Reception Is Great,”
USA Today, March 3, 2005; Yaroslav Trofimov and
Sarmad Ali, “Iraq’s Cellphone Battle,” Wall Street
Journal, July 21, 2005.

23. Kevin M. Woods et al., Iraqi Perspectives Project: A
View of Operation Iraqi Freedom from Saddam Hussein ’s
Senior Leader ship(NorioW, VA: U.S. Joint Forces
Command, 2006), p. 129.

24. Confidential interviews.

25. Joe Trento, “Pakistan & Iran’s Scary Alliance,”
National Security News Service, August 15, 2003,
http://www.storiesthatmatter.org/index.php?

option’ com_content&task’view& id’48&Itemid’29.

26. “Sanction Busting,” Newsweek, December 31, 1990,
p. 4. See also Director of Central Intelligence, Annual
Report on Intelligence Community Activities, August 22,
1997, http://www.cia.gov .

27. Bill Gertz, “French Connection Armed Saddam,”
Washington Times, September 8, 2004.

28. Bill Gertz, 5e^raya/(Washington, DC: Regnery
Publishing, 1999), p. 283.

29. Memorandum, Intelligence and Analysis on Iraq:
Issues for the Intelligence Community, July 29, 2004, p. 5,
CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Document No.
0001245667, http://www.foia.cia.gov .: Commission on
the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States
Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, Report to the
President of the United iS^a/e^(Washington, DC: GPO,
March 31, 2005), p. 15. Woodward quote from Bob
Woodward, Plan of Attack(NQw York: Simon and
Schuster, 2004), p. 217.

30. Rowan Scarborough, “U.S. Rushed Post- Saddam
Planning,” Washington Times, September 3, 2003.

31. President George W. Bush “President’s Remarks at
the United Nations General Assembly,” New York City,
September 12, 2002, http://www.whitehouse.gov .

32. NIE 2002- 16HC, Iraq's Continuing Programs for
Weapons of Mass Destruction, October 2002, p. 7, CIA
Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Document No.
0001075566, http://www.foia.cia.gov .

33. U.S. Senate, Select Committee on Intelligence,

Nomination of Lt. General Michael V. Hayden, USAF, to
Be Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence,
109th Congress, 1st session, April 14, 2005, p. 17.

34. U.S. Senate, Select Committee on Intelligence,

Nomination of General Michael V. Hayden, USAF, to Be
the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, 109th
Congress, 2nd session. May 18, 2006, p. 103.

35. Confidential interviews.

36. U.S. Senate, Select Committee on Intelligence, Report
on the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence
Assessments on Iraq, 108th Congress, 2nd session, July 7,
2004, p. 20; confidential interviews.

37. Colin L. Powell, “Remarks to the United Nations
Security Council,” New York City, February 5, 2003,
http ://www. state, gov/ secretary/ former/powell/remarks/20C

38. U.S. Senate, Select Committee on Intelligence, Report
on the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence
Assessments on Iraq, 108th Congress, 2nd session, July 7,
2004, p. 139; Charles Duelfer, Special Advisor to the
Director of Central Intelligence, Comprehensive Report oj
the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraqi WMD, vol. 1,
Nuclear Section, September 30, 2004, p. 36, CIA
Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Document No.
0001156442, http://www.foia.cia.gov .

39. U.S. Senate, Select Committee on Intelligence, Report
on the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence
Assessments on Iraq, 108th Congress, 2nd session, July 7,
2004, p. 203; confidential interviews.

40. Confidential interviews.

41. Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the
United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction,
Report to the President of the United States(W Sishington,
DC: GPO, March 31, 2005), pp. 113, 130.

42. U.S. Senate, Select Committee on Intelligence, Report
on the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence
Assessments on Iraq, 108th Congress, 2nd session, July 7,
2004, pp. 227-29; Charles Duelfer, Special Advisor to the
Director of Central Intelligence, Comprehensive Report oj
the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraqi WMD, vol. 2,
September 30, 2004, pp. 49-50, CIA Electronic FOIA

Reading Room, Document No. 0001156442,
http://www.foia.cia.gov .

43. NIE 2002- 16HC, Iraq's Continuing Programs for
Weapons of Mass Destruction, October 2002, p. 7, CIA
Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Document No.
0001075566, http://www.foia.cia.gov .

44. U.S. Senate, Select Committee on Intelligence, Report
on the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence
Assessments on Iraq, 108th Congress, 2nd session, July 7,
2004, p. 139; U.S. Senate, Select Committee on
Intelligence, Report on Postwar Findings About Iraq’s
WMD Programs and Links to Terrorism and How They
Compare with Prewar Assessments, 109th Congress, 2nd
session, September 8, 2006, p. 59. See also Dafna Linzer
and John J. Lumpkin, “Experts Doubt U.S. Claim on Iraqi
Drones,” Associated Press, August 24, 2003; Bradley
Graham, “Air Force Analysts Feel Vindicated on Iraqi
Drones,” Washington Post, September 26, 2003.

45. U.S. Senate, Select Committee on Intelligence, Report
on the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence
Assessments on Iraq, 108th Congress, 2nd session, July 7,
2004, p. 219 and appendix B, p. 430; U.S. Senate, Select
Committee on Intelligence, Report on Postwar Findings
About Iraq ’s WMD Programs and Links to Terrorism and
How They Compare with Prewar Assessments, 109th
Congress, 2nd session, September 8, 2006, p. 58.

46. Confidential interviews. Hayden comment from U.S.
Senate, Select Committee on Intelligence, Nomination oj
General Michael V. Hayden, USAF, to Be the Director oj
the Central Intelligence Agency, 109th Congress, 2nd
session. May 18, 2006, pp. 110, 119.

47. Joe Trento, “The Price of Cooking the CIA Books,”

National Security News Service, June 2, 2003,

http://www.storiesthatmatter.org/index.php?
option=com_content&task=view&id =53&Itemid=29.

48. Transcript of interview of Hayden by C-SPAN’s

Brian Lamb, April 15, 2007,

https://www.cia.gOv/cia/public_affairs/press_release/2007/

49. Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the
United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction,
Report to the President of the United States(W?ishmgton,
DC: GPO, March 31, 2005), p. 157.

50. Confidential interview.

51. A transcript of Bush’s “Axis of Evil” speech can be

found at

http://www.whitehouse.gOv/news/releases/2002/l 0/2002 1 (

8.html .

52. Ibid.

53. Confidential interview.

54. U.S. Senate, Select Committee on Intelligence,
Nomination of General Michael V. Hayden, USAF, to Be
the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, 109th
Congress, 2nd session. May 18, 2006, p. 32; Senator Carl
Levin, “Nomination of General Michael V. Hayden,”
Congressional Record, May 25, 2006 (Senate), pp.
S5298-S5301; U.S. Senate, Select Committee on
Intelligence, Report on Postwar Findings About Iraq’s
WMD Programs and Links to Terrorism and How They
Compare With Prewar Assessments, 109th Congress, 2nd
Session, September 8, 2006, pp. 86-87, 109.

55. Warren P. Strobel, Jonathan S. Landay, and John
Walcott, “Dissent over Going to War Grows Among U.S.
Government Officials,” Miami Herald, October 7, 2002;
Dana Milbank, “For Bush, Facts Are Malleable,”
Washington Post, October 22, 2002. For telephone
intercepts, see Julian Borger, “White House Exaggerating
Iraqi Threat,” U.K. Guardian, October 9, 2002.

56. Woodward, Plan of Attack, p. 214.

57. Confidential interviews. For the twenty-nine-man
section concentrating on Iraqi WMD, confidential
interviews and Capt. Mark Choate, “Knowing Is Half the
Battle,” INSCOM Journal, vol. 26, no. 2 (2003 Almanac):
p. 13.

58. Confidential interviews.

59. Michael Hirsh and Michael Isikoff, “No More Hide
and Seek,” Newsweek, February 10, 2003, p. 44.

60. Confidential interview.

61. Powell’s presentation and accompanying graphics,

including the Iraqi intercepts, can be found in “U.S.
Secretary of State Colin Powell Addresses the U.N.
Security Council,” February 5, 2003,

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/02/20030!!

1 .html .

62. U.S. Senate, Select Committee on Intelligence, Report
on the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence
Assessments on Iraq, 108th Congress, 2nd session, July 7,
2004, p. 429, appendix B.

63. U.S. Senate, Select Committee on Intelligence, Report
on the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence
Assessments on Iraq, 108th Congress, July 7, 2004, p.
423, appendix A, and p. 429, appendix B.

64. See also Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus, “U.S.
Hedges on Finding Iraqi Weapons,” Washington Post,
May 29, 2003; Barton Gellman, “Iraq’s Arsenal Was
Only on Paper,” Washington Post, January 7, 2004.

65. Dana Priest and Walter Pincus, “Bin Laden-Hussein
Link Hazy,” Washington Post, February 13, 2003.

66. Confidential interview with former State Department
official.

67. Woods et al., Iraqi Perspectives Project, pp. 93-94.

68. Fowler, “Al-Zarqawi.”

69. “Iraq Shuts Down Phone Network to Thwart CIA
Eavesdropping,” Associated Press, March 19, 2003.

70. Max Hastings, “The Iraq Intelligence Fiasco Exposes
Us to Terrible Danger,” U.K. Guardian, September 20,
2004.

71. Information concerning NSA’s performance in the
Iraqi WMD scandal was deleted in toto from the final
report of the Senate intelligence committee on the U.S.
intelligence community’s per for mance prior to the
invasion of Iraq, for which see U.S. Senate, Select
Committee on Intelligence, Report on the U.S.
Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence
Assessments on Iraq, 108th Congress, 2nd session, July 7,
2004, pp. 264-65.

14: The Dark Victory

E NSA/CSS, Office of the Director, “Director’s Intent,”
February 11, 2003, partially declassified and on file at the
National Security Archive, Washington, DC.

Z Bob Woodward, “The Foreign Policy Questions John

Kerry Would Not Answer,” Manchester Union Leader,
October 26, 2004. For sixty thousand military and civilian
personnel belonging to NS A, National Guard Bureau,
National Guard Assistant Program (NGAP) Position
Description: Mobilization Assistant to the Deputy Chief,
Central Security Ser vice, National Security Agency,
September 1, 2003. This document has since been
removed from the National Guard Bureau Web site, from
which it was downloaded in 2003.

T Confidential interview.

4, Director of Central Intelligence, The 2003 Annual
Report of the United States Intelligence Community, July
2004, sec. Support to Operation Iraqi Freedom.

^ Confidential interview.

C Capt. Mark Choate, “Knowing Is Half the Battle,”
INSCOM Journal, vol. 26, no. 2 (2003 Almanac): pp. 13-
15.

T Amatzia Baram, “The Republican Guard: Outgunned
and Outnumbered, but They Never Surrender,” U.K.
Guardian, March 25, 2003.

K For the order of battle of the Second Republican Guard
Corps, see NIE 99-04, National Intelligence Council,
Iraqi Military Capabilities Through 2003, April 1999, p.
4, CIA Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Document No.

0001261421, http://www.foia.cia.gov : Charles Duelfer,
Special Advisor to the Director of Central Intelligence,
Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI
on Iraqi WMD, vol. 1, September 30, 2004, p. 94, CIA
Electronic FOIA Reading Room, Document No.
0001156395, http://www.foia.cia.gov .

9^ For Bad Aibling Station, see Choate, “Knowing,” p. 20.
For ten Iraqi divisions deployed in northern Iraq, see
Stephen T. Hosmer, Why the Iraqi Resistance to the
Coalition Invasion Was So Weak(SsintSi Monica, CA:
Rand Corporation, 2007), p. 42.

10. Confidential interview.

11. Confidential interview.

12. Choate, “Knowing,” p. 20. For the expulsion of the
two Iraqi diplomats in New York, see John McWethy,
“Iraq’s Attack Network (Operation Imminent Horizon),”
ABC News, March 5, 2003.

13. Confidential interviews. See also Ed Johnson,
“Former Cabinet Member: British Intelligence Spied on
Annan,” Associated Press, February 26, 2004; Patrick E.
Tyler, “Ex-Aide to Blair Says the British Spied on
Annan,” New York Times, February 27, 2004; Glenn
Frankel, “Britain Accused of Spying on Annan Before
Iraq War,” Washington Post, February 27, 2004; Todd
Richissin and Scott Shane, “West’s Spies Fistening in on

U.N.’s Annan,” Baltimore Sun, February 27, 2004.

14. Martin Bright, Ed Vulliamy, and Peter Beaumont,
“Revealed: US Dirty Tricks to Win Vote on Iraq War,”
U.K. Observer, March 2, 2003.

15. Chaka Ferguson, “Woodward: Media Should Have
Been More Critical of Iraq Intelligence,” Associated
Press, July 9, 2004.

16. Dafna Linzer, “IAEA Leader’s Phone Tapped,”
Washington Post, December 12, 2004.

17. Scott R. Gourley, “MEU (SOC),” Special Operations
Technology, vol. 2, issue 6, September 13, 2004,
www.special-operations-technology.com/ article. cfm?
DocID=606.

18. Confidential interviews.

19. Confidential interviews. See also Kevin M. Woods et
al., Iraqi Perspectives Project: A View of Operation Iraqi
Freedom from Saddam Hussein 's Senior
LeadershipQSorioW, VA: U.S. Joint Forces Command,
2006), p. 103, http://handle.dtic.mi1/100.2/ADA446305 :
Bradley Graham, “Republican Guard Troops Moved
Nearer to Baghdad,” Washington Post, February 28,
2003.

20. Michael R. Gordon and General Bernard E. Trainor,

Cobra //(New York: Pantheon Books, 2006), p. 165.

21. “Iraq Shuts Down Phone Network to Thwart CIA
Eavesdropping,” Associated Press, March 19, 2003.

22. The description of the events leading up to the Dora
Farms attack is drawn from Barton Gellman and Dana
Priest, “CIA Had Fix on Hussein,” Washington Post,
March 20, 2003; Elisabeth Bumiller and David Johnston,
“Surprise Strike at Outset Eeaves Urgent Mystery: Who
Was Hit?,” New York Times, March 21, 2003; Bob
Woodward, “Attack Was 48 Hours Old When It ‘Began,’
” Washington Post, March 23, 2003.

23. James Kitfield, “Army’s Race to Baghdad Exposes
Risks in Battle Plan,” National Journal, March 28, 2003,

p. 9.

24. Michael T. Mosely, “Operation Iraqi Freedom — ^by

the Numbers,” U.S. Central Command Air Force, April
30, 2003, p. 15,

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/2003

25. Confidential interview.

26. Tech. Sgt. Kristina Brown, “New Feadership Takes
Over 70th IW,” Spokesman, April 2004, AIA FOIA.

27. Gregg K. Kakesako, “Isle Marines Return from Iraq

Conflict,” Honolulu Star-Bulletin, June 10, 2003,

http://starbulletin.eom/2003/06/10/news/story4.html.

2L Gourley, “MEU (SOC).”

29. Confidential interview.

30. Confidential interviews.

31. Confidential interviews.

32. Woods et al., Iraqi Perspectives Project, p. 105.

33. Confidential interviews.

34. “14th Signal Regiment (Electronic Warfare)
Operations in Southern Iraq,” The Rose and Laurel, 2003,
p. 104.

35. Confidential interview.

36. 3rd Infantry Division, Operation Iraqi Freedom: 3rd
Infantry Division (Mechanized) “Rock of the Marne”
After Action Report, Operational Overview Section, Battle
for Tallil, March 21, 2003, final draft, 2003, Army FOIA.

37. Major Walker M. Field, USMC, “Marine Artillery in
the Battle of An Nasiriyah,” Field Artillery, November-
December 2003, p. 29.

38. Oral history. Interview with Major Steven Bower,
Combat Studies Institute, Fort Feavenworth, KS, October
30, 2006, p. 7; oral history. Interview with Major Nicole

Stanford, Combat Studies Institute, Fort Leavenworth,
KS, May 4, 2007, p. 7.

39. Julian Borger, “The Crucial Moment; US Must Defeat
Elite Iraqi Troops,” U.K. Guardian, March 25, 2003.

40. Confidential interview. For the importance placed on
defeating the Medina Division by army planners, see
Kitfield, “Army’s Race to Baghdad.”

41. Dana Priest and Walter Pincus, “Havens Offered to
Defectors,” Washington Post, March 22, 2003; Walter
Pincus, “Evidence on Hussein Detailed,” Washington
Post, March 24, 2003; David E. Sanger, “Officials Fear
Iraqis Plan to Use Gas,” New York Times, March 25,
2003.

42. Corey Pein, “The Tech Fix,” Metro Spirit, June 20,
2006, http://metrospirit.com .

43. Col. Gregory R. Fontenot, U.S. Army, Ret., On Point:
The United States Army in Operation Iraqi Freedomifort
Leavenworth, KS: Center for Army Lessons Learned,
2004), p. 89.

44. Sig Christenson, “Flight into Ambush,” San Antonio

Express-News, March 21, 2004,

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/military/ stories/MY S

45. Transcript, Fifth Corps Commander Live Briefing

from Baghdad, May 7, 2003,

http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/transcript.aspx?

transcriptid^25 7 3 .

46. For the Guardrail mission over the Karbala Gap,
confidential interviews. For the artillery strike on the
Medina Division, see Colonel Theodore J. Janosko and
Lt. Colonel Robert G. Cheatam Jr., “The Sound of
Thunder: VGA in Operation Iraqi Freedom,” Field
Artillery Journal, September- October 2003, p. 36.

47. Col. James Poss, “Intelligence Family Made NTI
Successful,” Spokesman, July 2003, AIA FOIA. This
article was pulled from the AIA Web site at some point
after its publication in 2003.

48. Bernard Weinraub, “Army Reports Iraq Is Moving
Toxic Arms to Its Troops,” New York Times, March 28,
2003.

49. “Rumsfeld Warns Syria,” Chicago Sun-Times, March
28, 2003.

50. Interview, Lt. General William Scott Wallace, “The
Invasion of Iraq,” PBS, Frontline, February 26, 2004,
http://www.pbs. 0 rg/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/invasion/i

51. “Blood. Blood. Blood.” quote from General Tommy
Franks (USA, Ret.), American SoldierfNow York: Regan
Books, 2004), p. 515. See also H.A.S.C. No. 108-15, U.S.

House of Representatives, Armed Services Committee,
Operation Iraqi Freedom: Operations and

Reconstruction, 108th Congress, 1st session, July 10,
2003, p. 79; Rick Atkinson, Peter Baker, and Thomas E.
Ricks, “Confused Start, Decisive End,” Washington Post,
April 13, 2003.

52. Interview, Lt. General James Conway, “The Invasion
of Iraq,” PBS, Frontline, February 26, 2004,
http://www.pbs. 0 rg/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/invasion/i

53. James Kitfield, “March on Baghdad Brings Mix of
Power, Flexibility,” National Journal, April 4, 2003.

54. Bob Drogin, “Iraqi ‘Chatter’ Threatens Use of
ChQmicdih,'' Los Angeles Times, April 3, 2003.

55. Oral history. Interview with Major Erik Berdy,
January 20, 2006, p. 17, Combat Studies Institute, Fort
Feavenworth, KS.

56. Confidential interviews.

57. Greg Grant, “Network Centric Blind Spot:
Intelligence Failed to Detect Massive Iraqi
CouniQmiXdiQkj' Defense News, September 12, 2005, p. 1.

58. Gordon and Trainor, Cobra II, p. 352; David Talbot,
“How Technology Failed in Iraq,” Technology Review,
November 2004.

59. The most detailed coverage of the incident at the
Diyala Canal bridge can be found in John Koopman, “The
Compound,” San Francisco Chronicle, November 14,
2003.

60. Confidential interview.

61. Choate, “Knowing,” p. 20. SIGINT’s role in
preventing this ambush is also obliquely referred to in Lt.
General Keith B. Alexander, Headquarters, Department of
the Army, Deputy Chief of Staff, G-2, U.S. Senate,
statement before the Armed Services Committee,
Hearings on Fiscal Year 2005 Joint Military Intelligence
Program (JMIP) and Army Tactical Intelligence and
Related Activities (TIARA), 108th Congress, 2nd session,
April 7, 2004, p. 21.

62. John Koopman, “Iraq, Not Friendly Fire, Killed
Marines, U.S. Says,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 10,
2003.

63. Lt. General Keith B. Alexander, Headquarters,
Department of the Army, Deputy Chief of Staff, G-2,
Statement before the U.S. Senate Armed Services
Committee, Hearings on Fiscal Year 2005 Joint Military
Intelligence Program (JMIP) and Army Tactical
Intelligence and Related Activities (TIARA), U.S. Senate,
108th Congress, 2nd session, April 7, 2004, p. 21; oral
history. Interview with Major Christopher Carter,

Combat Studies Institute, Fort Leavenworth, KS, June 28,
2006, p. 19; Bernard Weinraub, “U.S. Military Says It
Hears Hussein Son Calling Shots,” New York Times, April
8, 2003.

64. Fred Kaplan, “Smart Bombs, Dumb Targets,” Slate,
December 16, 2003, http://www.slate.com/id/2092759/ .

65. Confidential interview.

66. Poss, “Intelligence Family.”

67. Confidential interview.

68. Confidential interviews.

69. Confidential interviews. See also U.S. Marine Corps,
Major J. P. Myers, Enduring Freedom Combat
Assessment Team, PowerPoint presentation, “Intelligence
Operations in Operation Iraqi Freedom,” slide 13, August
2003, https://www.mccdc.usmc.mil .

70. U.S. Marine Corps, Enduring Freedom Combat

Assessment Team, PowerPoint presentation, briefing to
MORS, “Information Management Issues Emerging from
USMC Experience in Operation Iraqi Freedom,” slide 16,
October 28, 2003,

http:www.mors.org/meetings/c2_2003/Exner.pdf.

71. Department of the Navy, Office of Naval Research,
BAA #07-008, presentation, “Command and Control

Systems (C2 and CS), Programmic Issues,” January 29,
2007,

http:www.onr.navy.mil/sci_tech/31/docs/c2cs_Fy08_indus

72. U.S. Marine Corps, Major J. P. Myers, Enduring
Freedom Combat Assessment Team, Power-Point
presentation, “Intelligence Operations in Operation Iraqi
Freedom,” slide 19, August 2003,
https://www.mccdc.usmc.mil .

73. Oral history. Interview with Major Steven Bower,
October 30, 2006, p. 7, Combat Studies Institute, Fort
Leavenworth, KS.

74. Oral history. Interview with Major Kris Arnold, April
1, 2005, p. 7, Combat Studies Institute, Fort Leavenworth,
KS; confidential interviews.

15: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

L Sean Loughlin, “Rumsfeld on Looting in Iraq: ‘Stuff
Happens,’ ” CNN, April 12, 2003.

Z Oral history. Interview with Colo nel James Boozer,
January 24, 2006, p. 5, Combat Studies Institute, Fort
Leavenworth, KS.

T Warren P. Strobel and John Walcott, “Post-war
Planning Non-Existent,” Knight Ridder Newspapers,
October 17, 2004; Michael R. Gordon, “The Strategy to
Secure Iraq Did Not Foresee a 2nd War,” New York

Times, October 19, 2004.

4, “513th Military Intelligence Brigade,” Mirage, vol. 1,
Fourth Quarter ed. (2003): p. 20; Dr. Donald P. Wright
and Col. Timothy R. Reese, On Point II: Transition to the
New Campaign(V ort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies
Institute Press, 2008), p. 193.

^ Oral history. Interview with Major Ronald Beadenkopf,
November 15, 2006, p. 9, Combat Studies Institute, Fort
Leavenworth, KS.

C Confidential interviews.

T Oral history. Interview with Major Ronald Beadenkopf,
November 15, 2006, p. 4, Combat Studies Institute, Fort
Leavenworth, KS.

K Douglas Jehl, “U.S. Withdraws a Team of Weapons
Hunters from Iraq,” New York Times, January 8, 2004.

9^ “Rumsfeld Blames Iraq Problems on ‘Pockets of Dead-
Enders,’ ” USA Today, June 18, 2003.

10. Michael Keane, “The Guerrilla Advantage in Iraq,”
Los Angeles Times, November 18, 2003.

11. Anthony Shadid, “Two U.S. Soldiers Killed in Iraqi
Baath Bastion,” Washington Post, May 28, 2003.

12. Eric Schmitt, “New Spy Gear Aims to Thwart Attacks

in Iraq,” New York Times, October 23, 2003; David Rieff,
“Blueprint for a Mess,” New York Times, November 2,
2003.

13. Oral history. Interview with Major Steven Bower,
October 30, 2006, p. 8, Combat Studies Institute, Fort
Leavenworth, KS.

14. Michael J. Gearty, “Lessons Learned: Task Force
Sentinel Freedom OEF/OIF,” Military Intelligence
Professional Bulletin, October-December 2003; CALL,
Initial Impressions Report: Operations in Samarra, Iraq:
Stryker Brigade Combat Team 1, 3rd Brigade, 2nd
Infantry, December 2004, p. 38, CALL, Fort
Leavenworth, KS; oral history. Interview with Major
Chris Budihas, January 31, 2006, p. 12, Combat Studies
Institute, Fort Leavenworth, KS.

15. Oral history. Interview with Major Ronald
Beadenkopf November 15, 2006, p. 6, Combat Studies
Institute, Fort Leavenworth, KS.

16. Confidential interviews.

17. 3rd Infantry Division, Operation Iraqi Freedom: 3rd
Infantry Division (Mechanized) ‘Rock of the Marne”
After Action Report, 2003, p. 15, Army FOIA.

18. D.J. Reyes, “Intelligence Battlefield Operating System
Lessons Learned: Stability Operations and Support

Operations During Operation Iraqi Freedom,” Military
Intelligence Professional Bulletin, January-March 2004.

19. For Korean linguists, see oral history. Interview with
Major Greg Ford, May 23, 2007, p. 8, Combat Studies
Institute, Fort Leavenworth, KS. Joe Bauman, “Long Iraq
Stay Irks Utahns,” Salt Lake City Deseret Morning News,
September 8, 2003; Anne O’Donnell, “The Translator
Crisis,” New Republic, December 22, 2003. For Serbo-
Croatian linguists with the First Armored Division,
confidential interview.

20. Kendall G. Gott, ed.. Eyewitness to War: The US
Army in Operation AL FAJR: An Oral History, vol. 1
(Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press,
2006), p. 3; oral history. Interview with Major Ronald
Beadenkopf November 15, 2006, pp. 3-5, Combat
Studies Institute, Fort Leavenworth, KS.

21. CALL, Initial Impressions Report: Operations in
Mosul, Iraq, Stryker Brigade Combat Team 1, 3rd
Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, December 21, 2004, pp.
68, 75, CALL, Fort Leavenworth, KS.

22. Confidential interview.

23. Oral history. Interview with Lt. Colonel David Seigel,
October 5, 2006, p. 6, Combat Studies Institute, Fort
Leavenworth, KS.

24. Confidential interviews. For the formation of Cobra
Focus, Collin Agee, Deputy Chief of Staff, G-2,
“PowerPoint presentation. Army Intelligence
Transformation,” given at Association of the U.S. Army
(AUSA) Annual Conference, “Actionable Intelligence
Panel,” October 26, 2004. The slides accompanying this
presentation were removed from the AUSA Web site at
some point after 2004.

25. Oral history. Interview with Sergeant Major Kevin
Gainey, December 9, 2005, p. 9, Combat Studies Institute,
Fort Leavenworth, KS.

26. Wright and Reese, On Part II, p. 222.

27. Confidential interview; Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco: The
American Military Adventure in /ra^(New York: Penguin
Press, 2006), pp. 408-09.

28. Confidential interviews; oral history. Interview with
Major Greg Ford, May 23, 2007, p. 9, Combat Studies
Institute, Fort Leavenworth, KS; Lt. Colonel Robert P.
Whalen, Jr., “Everything Old Is New Again: Task Force
Phantom in the Iraq War,” Military Review, May-June
2007, pp. 31-35.

29. Oral history. Interview with Major Thomas Neemeyer,
December 2, 2005, p. 8, Combat Studies Institute, Fort
Leavenworth, KS; oral history. Interview with Lt. Colonel
Henry A. Arnold, October 21, 2005, p. 15, Combat

Studies Institute, Fort Leavenworth, KS.

30. Confidential interviews; Scott Wilson, “Chalabi Aides
Suspected of Spying for Iran,” Washington Post, May 22,
2004; Rupert Cornwell, “Chalabi Falls from Grace as US
Spy Row Erupts,” U.K. Independent, June 3, 2004.

31. James Risen and David Johnston, “Chalabi
Reportedly Told Iran That U.S. Had Code,” New York
Times, July 2, 2004; David Johnston and James Risen,
“Polygraph Testing Starts at Pentagon in Chalabi
Inquiry,” New York Times, June 3, 2004.

32. Confidential interviews.

33. The background on the Battle of Fallujah can be
found in Colonel John R. Ballard, “Lessons Learned from
Operation AL FAJR: The Liberation of Fallujah,”
presented at the 10th Annual Command and Control
Research and Technology Symposium: The Future of C2,
April 6, 2005, pp. 4-5.

34. A detailed description of the first Battle of Fallujah

can be found in U.S. Army National Ground Intelligence
Center, Complex Environments: Battle of Fallujah I, April
2004, March 6, 2006,

https://www.wikileaks.org/leak/fallujah.pdf.

35. Oral history. Interview with Captain Natalie Friel,
July 28, 2006, p. 6, Combat Studies Institute, Fort

Leavenworth, KS.

36. Karen Blakeman, “Marine’s Wry Joke: Iraq Isn’t Like
Hawai’i,” Honolulu Advertiser, May 18, 2004; William
Cole, “Marines Recall Their Time in Iraq,” Honolulu
Advertiser, July 22, 2004.

37. Confidential interviews.

38. Oral history. Interview with Lt. General Richard F.
Natonski, April 5, 2007, p. 4, Combat Studies Institute,
Fort Leavenworth, KS; Toby Hamden, “This Is Where the
Foreign Fighters Hang Out,” U.K. Daily Telegraph,
November 10, 2004.

39. Dr. Rebecca Grant, The War of 9/11: How the World
Conflict Transformed America’s Air and Space
WeaponiW DC: Air Force Association, 2005),
p. 39; Thom Shanker and Eric Schmitt, “Terror Command
in Falluja Is Half Destroyed, U.S. Says,” New York Times,
October 12, 2004.

40. Colonel Terri Meyer, USCENTAF/A2, PowerPoint
presentation, “Operational ISR in the CENT-COM AOR,”
December 7, 2004.

41. The story of the second Battle of Fallujah is detailed
in Matt M. Matthews, Operation AT FAJR: A Study in
Army and Marine Corps Joint Operations (Fort
Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute, 2006).

42. “Interview, Lt. Colonel James Rainey,” April 19,
2006, in Gott, Eyewitness to War, vol. 1, p. 119.

43. Oral history. Interview with Lt. Colonel John
Reynolds, March 14, 2006, p. 12, Combat Studies
Institute, Fort Leavenworth, KS.

44. Oral history. Interview with Lt. Colonel John
Reynolds, March 14, 2006, p. 24, Combat Studies
Institute, Fort Leavenworth, KS.

45. Gordon Trowbridge, “Ready or Not, Civilians to
Return to Fallujah Within Days,” Air Force Times,
December 20, 2004.

46. Oral history. Interview with Gunnery Sergeant
Michael Johnson, February 10, 2006, pp. 16-17, Cold
War Oral History Project, John A. Adams ’71 Center for
Military History and Strategic Analysis, Virginia Military
Institute, VA.

47. Oral history. Interview with Captain Brandon Griffin,
July 24, 2006, p. 11, Combat Studies Institute, Fort
Leavenworth, KS.

48. Oral history. Interview with Master Sergeant Michael
Threatt, September 20, 2006, p. 20, Combat Studies
Institute, Fort Leavenworth, KS; confidential interviews.

49. Oral history. Interview with Captain Paul Toolan,

July 24, 2006, p. 8, Combat Studies Institute, Fort
Leavenworth, KS.

50. CALL, Operation OUTREACH Newsletter, No. 03-
27, October 2003 Section: Afghanistan Counter-Mortar
Predictive Analysis, p. 20.

51. Oral history. Interview with Gunnery Sergeant
Michael Johnson, February 10, 2006, pp. 14-15, Cold
War Oral History Project, John A. Adams ’71 Center for
Military History and Strategic Analysis, Virginia Military
Institute, VA.

52. Tim McGirk, “The Taliban on the Run,” Time, April
4, 2005.

53. U.S. Senate, Armed Services Committee, Vice
Admiral Lowell E. Jacoby, USN, Director, Defense
Intelligence Agency, statement for the record, “Current
and Projected National Security Threats to the United
States,” March 17, 2005, p. 9; Sayed Salahuddin,
“Afghanistan’s Taliban Just Won’t Go Away,” Reuters,
April 7, 2005; N. C. Aizenman, “General Predicts
Taliban’s Demise,” Washington Post, April 17, 2005;
Carlotta Gall, “U.S. Training Pakistani Units Fighting
Qaeda,” New York Times, April 27, 2005.

54. Carlotta Gall, “As Winter Ends, Afghan Rebels Step
Up Attacks,” New York Times, April 3, 2005; Carlotta
Gall, “Afghan Rebels Step Up Attacks, Killing 9 Near

Pakistani Border,” New York Times, May 6, 2005; Nick
Meo, “In Afghanistan, the Taliban Rise Again for
Fighting Season,” U.K. Independent, May 15, 2005;
Carlotta Gall, “Despite Years of U.S. Pressure, Taliban
Fight On in Jagged Hills,” New York Times, June 4, 2005;
N. C. Aizenman, “Violence Linked to Taliban Swells in
Afghanistan,” Washington Post, June 9, 2005.

55. Confidential interview. See also Daniel Cooney, “2
Taliban Leaders May Be Directing Battle in
Afghanistan,” Associated Press, June 24, 2005.

56. Sean D. Naylor, “The Waiting Game: A Stronger
Taliban Lies Low, Hoping the U.S. Will Leave
Afghanistan,” Armed Forces Journal International,
February 2006; Pete Boisson, “Punishment in Syahchow,
Afghanistan, 25 July 2005,” in William G. Robertson, ed..
In Contact! Case Studies from the Long Warifori
Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2006),
pp. 101-23.

57. For an example of coordinated Taliban attacks on
units of the 173rd Airborne Brigade in Zabul Province in
the summer of 2005, including Taliban use of walkie-
talkies, see Pfc. Jon H. Arguello, “Paratroopers Deal
Blow to Taliban in Remote Valley,” Army News Service,
May 9, 2005; Paul Wiseman, “Taliban on the Run but Far
from Vanquished,” USA Today, July 26, 2005; Catherine
Philp, “They Expected an Easy Ride, Then the Enemy

Struck Back,” U.K. Times, July 30, 2005; Scott Baldauf,
“Small US Units Lure Taliban into Losing Battles,”
Christian Science Monitor, October 31, 2005; Scott
Patsko, “Sergeant Risks Own Life to Protect His Men,”
Lorain (OH) Morning Journal, November 11, 2005.

58. The only detailed publicly available description of the

Battle of Mari Ghar can be found in Sean D. Naylor, “The
Battle of Mari Army Times, June 26, 2006.

59. Oral history. Interview with Captain Brandon Griffin,
July 24, 2006, p. 11, Combat Studies Institute, Fort
Leavenworth, KS; oral history. Interview with Captain
Paul Toolan, July 24, 2006, p. 9, Combat Studies
Institute, Fort Leavenworth, KS; quote from oral history.
Interview with It. Colonel Don Bolduc, July 26, 2006, p.
8, Combat Studies Institute, Fort Leavenworth, KS. See
also Naylor, “The Waiting Game.”

60. Lieutenant General Thomas F. Metz, Colonel William
J. Tait, Jr., and Major J. Michael McNealy, “OIF II:
Intelligence Leads Successful Counterinsurgency
Operations,” Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin,
July-September 2005.

61. Oral history. Interview with Colonel Emmett Schaill,
January 24, 2007, p. 14, Combat Studies Institute, Fort
Leavenworth, KS.

62. Capt. Kevin Stemkaamp, PowerPoint presentation, 1st

Brigade, 25th Infantry Division, Stryker Brigade Combat
Team OIF III (Sep 04-Sep 05), March 9, 2006.

63. “IIP Recover Weapons, Detainees,” Advisor, July 2,
2005, p. 11, http://www.mnstci.iraq.centcom.mil .

64. Department of Defense “Bloggers Roundtable” with
Major General Rick Lynch, USA, Commanding General,
Multinational Division Center, via teleconference from
Iraq, Operation Marne Husky, August 16, 2007,
http: WWW. defenselink.mil./dodcmsshare/BloggerAssets/2C

08/Lynch_ 081607_transcript.pdf . “Fairly scarce” quote
from “Blogger Call: MG Rick Lynch, CDR 3rd ID,” the
Q and O Blog, August 16, 2007,

http://www.qando.net/details. aspx?entry=6690.

65. “Special Troops Battalion, 2 Bde, FOB Kalsu, Iraq,”
Tones tar News, February 15, 2006, p. I.

66. CAPT Brian Gellman, “From Dagger 6,” in Dagger

News, July 2006, p. 1,

http://www.506infantry.Org/pdf/506rct/jul_dagger_news.p

67. Hamza Hendawi and Jim Krane, “Deputy Unwittingly
Led Troops to al-Zarqawi,” Associated Press, June 8,
2006; Sean D. Naylor, “Inside the Zarqawi Takedown,”
Defense News, June 12, 2006; “Cell Phone Tracking
Helped Find al-Zarqawi,” CNN, June 10, 2006,
http://www.cnn.eom/2006/WORLD/meast/06/09/iraq.al.za

68. Confidential interviews. See also Captain Daniel J.
Smith, USN, Intelligence Gathering in a
Counterinsurgency{Cdivlis\Q, PA: U.S. Army War College,
2006), p. 15.

69. The commanding officer of CSG Baghdad from
September 2005 to May 2006 was Commander Stone
Davis, USN. From May 2006 to February 2007, the chief
of CSG Baghdad was Captain Dennis M. Pricolor, USN.
Captain Steve Tucker, USN, was chief of CSG Baghdad
from February 2007 to May 2008. For Tucker’s
background, see “Local Soldier Returns from Iraq, Is
Awarded Bronze Star,” Morgan County News (TN), July
12, 2008.

70. Confidential interviews with senior U.S. military
officials. See also Rear Amiral Edward H. Deets III,
“Individual Augmentee,” InfoDomain, F dill 2007, p. 23,
www.netwarcom.navy.mil/pao/infodomain/006-
InfoDomain%20fall%202007%200n-Line.pdf; Rear
Admiral Ned Deets III, Vice Commander, Naval Network
Warfare Command, PowerPoint presentation, “Readiness
to Fight: Our Shift Forward,” November 8, 2007.

71. David A. Fulghum, “Technology Will Be Key to Iraq
Buildup,” Aviation Week & Space Technology, January
14, 2007; Capt. Angela Johnson and Capt. Tim Crowe,
“Triton Signals Intelligence Collection System Proves
Critical Tool,” Fort Lewis (WA) Northwest Guardian,

June 14, 2007; Association of the U.S. Army, Torchbearer
National Security Report, Key Issues Relevant to Army
Intelligence Transformation, July 2007, p. 10.

72. Confidential interviews. See also Deets, “Individual
Augmentee,” p. 23.

73. Deets, “Readiness to Fight.” Deets, “Individual
Augmentee,” p. 23; Raymond T. Odiemo, Nicole E.
Brooks, and Francesco P. Mastracchio, “ISR Evolution in
the Iraqi Theater,” Joint Forces Quarterly, issue 50
(2008): p. 54.

74. Deets, “Individual Augmentee,” p. 23.

75. Naval Special Warfare Group 2, press release, “Navy
SEAL and Two Combat Support Sailors Killed in Iraq,”
July 9, 2007; “Barstow Navy Man Killed by Iraq Bomb,”
Associated Press, July 10, 2007.

76. Rick Atkinson, “The Single Most Effective Weapon
Against Our Deployed Forces,” Washington Post,
September 30, 2007.

77. Confidential interviews.

78. Commanding General MNF(I) General David H.

Petraeus, Multi-National Force — Iraq Counterinsurgency
Guidance, June 13, 2007,

http://www.airforce.forces.gc.ca/CFAWC/ContemporaryJ

Jun/2QQ7-Q6-Q6_MNF-I_COIN_Guidance-

Summer_2007_v7_e.asp .

79. “Local Soldier Returns from Iraq, Is Awarded Bronze
Star,” Morgan County News (TN), July 12, 2008.

80. Frank Graham, “Branch’s Service in Iraq Earns
Bronze Star,” North Platte (NE) Bulletin, August 27,
2008.

81. Confidential interviews with American, British,
Canadian, and Dutch intelligence officers; General
Michael V. Hayden, USAF, Director, Central Intelligence
Agency, statement for the record, U.S. Senate, Armed
Services Committee, “The Current Situation in Iraq and
Afghanistan,” November 15, 2006, p. 3.

82. Oral history. Interview with Major Jason Warner,
third interview, August 21, 2007, p. 8, Combat Studies
Institute, Fort Leavenworth, KS.

83. Confidential interview.

84. “June 18 Airpower Summary: Strike Eagles Watch
Over Troops,” Air Force Print News, June 19, 2007,
http://www.af mil/news/story.asp?id=123057754.

85. Tim Albone, “Medic! Man Down! Under Fire with
British Troops in a Taliban Ambush,” U.K. Sunday Times,
July 8, 2007.

86. Michael Smith, “SBS Behind Taliban Leader’s
Death,” U.K. Sunday Times, May 27, 2007.

87. Taimoor Shah, “NATO Seeks to retake Taliban
Haven,” New York Times, December 8, 2007.

88. Confidential interviews. See also Ahto Lobjakas,

“Afghan Diary, Part 4: ‘You Can Go from Being Smiled
At to Being Shot At,’ ” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
report, September 21, 2007,

http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1078732.html.

89. “June 17 Airpower Summary: Fighting Falcon
Provides Show of Force,” Air Force Print News, June 18,
2007, http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id^l23057615 :
“June 1 8 Airpower Summary,” Air Force Print News.

90. Christie Blatchford, “Canadian Troops Forced to Start
from Scratch,” Globe and Mail, August 31, 2007. See
also “Operation Groundhog Day: The Final Assault on a
Stubborn Enemy,” U.K. Independent, September 23,
2007.

91. Les Neuhaus, “NATO Soldier Killed in Offensive
Against Taliban in Afghanistan,” Stars & Stripes, October
25, 2007. For SIGINT, see Sgt. 1st Class Jacob Caldwell,
“Company Works to Flush Out Taliban During ‘Rock
Avalanche,’ ” American Forces Press Service, October
31, 2007; Sebastian Junger, “Into the Valley of Death,”

Vanity Fair, January 2008.

92. Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema, “Testing NATO’s
Determination,” Lahore Post, November 11, 2007,
http://thepost.com.pk/OpinionNews.aspx?
dtlid=128142&catid=ll.

93. John Ward Anderson, “Emboldened Taliban Reflected
in More Attacks, Greater Reach,” Washington Post,
September 25, 2007.

94. Confidential interviews.

95. Denis D. Gray, “U.S. Troops Patrol Gray Afghan
World, Watched by Taliban,” Associated Press, April 8,
2007.

96. “MacGyver,” Letter, July 27, 2007, / 27_jul_2007
anpoperations 1 .pdf.

97. Noor Khan, “Taliban Surrounded in Kandahar Fight,”
Associated Press, October 31, 2007.

98. Jason Straziuso, “Deaths Mark Grim Afghan, Iraq
Milestones,” Associated Press, November 10, 2007.

99. Lt. General David W. Bamo, U.S. Army Ret.,
“Fighting ‘The Other War’: Counterinsurgency Strategy
in Afghanistan, 2003-2005,” Military Review,
September-October 2007, p. 43.

16: Crisis in the Ranks

L NSA/CSS, NSA Public and Media Affairs, press
release, “NSA/CSS Welcomes LTG Keith B. Alexander,
USA,” July 30, 2005.

Z Keith background from biographical data sheet, Lt.
General Keith B. Alexander, Department of the Army,
Office of Public Affairs; biography, LTG Keith B.
Alexander, USA,

http://www.nsa.gOv/about/about00022.cfm.

U James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, “Bush Lets U.S. Spy
on Callers Without Courts,” New York Times, December
16, 2005; Eric Lichtblau and James Risen,

“Eavesdropping Effort Began Soon After Sept. 1 1
Attacks,” New York Times, December 18, 2005.

A George J. Tenet, “SIGINT in Context,” Defense
Intelligence Journal, vol. 9, no. 2 (Summer 2000): pp. 9-
12; Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, USAF, “Background on
NSA: History, Oversight, Relevance for Today,” Defense
Intelligence Journal, vol. 9, no. 2 (Summer 2000): pp.
13-26; “Statement for the Record of NSA Director Lt.
General Michael V. Hayden, USAF Before the House
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence,” April 12,
2000.

^ Confidential interviews. A detailed examination of the
wide range of data being collected by NSA can be found
in Siobhan Gorman, “NSA’s Domestic Spying Grows as

Agency Sweeps Up Data,” Wall Street Journal, March
10, 2008.

^ Confidential interviews.

J Confidential interviews with senior Justice Department
officials; Eric Lichtblau, “Debate and Protest at Spy
Program’s Inception,” New York Times, March 30, 2008;
Dan Eggen, “White House Secrecy on Wiretaps
Described,” Washington Post, October 3, 2007.

L Robert S. Mueller, III, “RSM Program Log,”
Wednesday, March 10, 2004, entry, p. 1, attached to
David Johnston and Scott Shane, “Notes Detail Visit to
Ashcroft’s Hospital Room,” New York Times, August 16,
2007.

9^ Jack Landman Goldsmith, prepared statement,
“Preserving the Rule of Law in the Fight Against
Terrorism,” U.S. Senate, Judiciary Committee, October 2,
2007.

10. Jeffrey Rosen, “Conscience of a Conservative,” New
York Times Magazine, September 9, 2007.

11. Confidential interviews.

12. Risen and Lichtblau, “Bush Lets U.S. Spy.”

13. Barton Gellman, Dafna Linzer, and Carol D. Leonnig,
“Surveillance Net Yields Few Suspects,” Washington

Post, February 5, 2006.

14. Chris Roberts, “Transcript: Debate on the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act,” El Paso Times, August 22,
2007.

15. Confidential interviews.

16. Douglas Jehl, “Senator Asks U.N. Nominee to
Explain His Security Requests,” New York Times, April
14, 2005.

17. Mark Hosenball, Periscope, “Spying — Giving Out
U.S. Names,” Newsweek, May 2, 2005.

18. Katherine Shrader, “Bolton Requested 10 Names in
Spy Reports,” Associated Press, June 27, 2005.

19. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and General

Michael Hayden, Principal Deputy Director for National
Intelligence, press briefing, December 19, 2005,

http:www.whitehouse.gOv/news/releases/2005/ 1 2/2005 1 2 ]

20. Richard W. Stevenson and Adam Liptak, “Cheney
Defends Eavesdropping Without Warrants,” New York
Times, December 21, 2005.

21. Risen and Lichtblau, “Bush Lets U.S. Spy.”
Connection to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed from
confidential interview.

22. “Two A1 Qaeda Suspects Arrested in Karachi,” Dawn
(Pakistan), January 10, 2003; Syed Saleem Shahzad,
“Pakistani Backlash to FBI Raids,” Asia Times, January
15, 2003; Jason Burke, “Shots in the Dark Against an
Unknown Enemy,” U.K. Observer, February 16, 2003.

23. Confidential interviews; Kevin Johnson and Jack
Kelly, “Terror Arrest Triggers Mad Scramble,” USA
Today, March 2, 2003; Rory McCarthy and Jason Burke,
“Endgame in the Desert of Death for the World’s Most
Wanted Man,” U.K. Observer, March 9, 2003; Kevin
Whitelaw, “A Tightening Noose,” U.S. News & World
Report, March 17, 2003.

24. Confidential interview.

25. Eric Lichtblau and James Risen, “Spy Agency Mined
Vast Data Trove, Officials Report,” New York Times,
December 24, 2005.

26. John Markoff and Scott Shane, “Documents Show
Link Between AT&T and Agency in Eavesdropping
Case,” New York Times, April 13, 2006; John Markoff,
“U.S. Steps into Wiretap Suit Against AT&T,” New York
Times, April 29, 2006; Leslie Cauley, “NSA Has Massive
Database of America’s Phone Bills,” USA Today, May
11, 2006; John O’Neill and Eric Lichtblau, “Qwest’s
Refusal of NSA Query Is Explained,” New York Times,
May 12, 2006.

2L NS A OH-01-74 to NS A OH- 14-81, oral history,
Interview with Frank B. Rowlett, 1976, pp. 357- 61, NSA
FOIA; NSA OH-02-79 thru 04-79, oral history. Interview
with Dr. Abraham Sinkov, May 1979, p. 84, NSA FOIA

28. U.S. Senate, Final Report of the Select Committee to
Study Governmental Operations with Respect to
Intelligence Activities, 94th Congress, 2nd session, bk. 3,
pp. 767-69; letter, Barsby to Corderman, October 9,
1945, and letter, Abzug to McKay, in U.S. House of
Representatives, Government Operations Committee,
Interception of Nonverbal Communications by Federal
Intelligence Agencies, 94th Congress, 1st and 2nd
sessions, 1976, pp. 208, 210; L. Britt Snider, “Unlucky
Shamrock: Recollections from the Church Committee’s
Investigation of NSA,” Studies in Intelligence, Winter
1999- 2000, unclassified ed., pp. 50-51. For the army’s
abortive attempts to get legislation passed that would have
provided legal protection to the cable companies, see
memorandum, Russell to Larkin, Proposed Bill to Amend
Section 605 of the Communications Act of 1934 in Order
to Increase the Security of the United States, and for
Other Purposes, March 13, 1948, p. 1, CREST

Collection, Document No. CIA-RDP57-
003 84R00 100007006 1-9, NA, CP; memorandum, Clarke
to Forrestal, December 13, 1947, RG-330, Entry 199 OSD
Decimal File 1947-1950, box 105, file: CD 24-1-1, NA,

CP; letter, Carville to Martin, June 1948, CREST
Collection, Document No. CIA-RDP57-
003 84R00 1000070088-0, NA, CP; ASA, Annual Report,
Plans and Operations Section (AS-23) FY 1948, p. 24,
INSCOM FOIA.

29. Eric Lichtblau, “Key Senators Raise Doubts on
Eavesdropping Immunity,” New York Times, November
1, 2007; confidential interviews.

30. Confidential interviews.

31. Scott Shane, “Attention in NS A Debate Turns to
Telecom Industry,” New York Times, February II, 2006.

32. Katherine Shrader, “Bush Seeks Legal Immunity for
Telecoms,” Associated Press, September 5, 2007; Eric
Lichtblau, “Immunity Crucial in Talks on Eavesdropping
Rules,” New York Times, October 10, 2007.

33. For an example of McConnelTs impassioned pleas for
granting retroactive immunity to the telecommunications
companies, see Mike McConnell, “A Key Gap in Fighting
Terrorism,” Washington Post, February 15, 2008.

34. Confidential interview.

35. U.S. Department of Justice, Legal Authorities
Supporting the Activities of the National Security Agency
Described by the President, January 19, 2006; Attorney

General Alberto Gonzales and General Michael Hayden,
Principal Deputy Director for National Intelligence, press
briefing, December 19, 2005. For CIA programs, see
Dana Priest, “Covert CIA Program Withstands New
Furor,” Washington Post, December 30, 2005.

36. Letter, February 2, 2006,

http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/nsaspying/FISA_AUMF

37. “Wiretap Mystery: Spooks React,” Defensetech.org,

December 20, 2005,

http://www.defensetech.org/archives/002032.html.

38. Confidential interview.

39. Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the
United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction,
Report to the President of the United States(W?ishmgton,
DC: GPO, March 31, 2005), p. 375.

40. Devlin Barrett, “Security Issue Kills Domestic Spying
Inquiry,” Associated Press, May 10, 2006.

41. Confidential interviews.

42. The Comey incident was first revealed in Eric
Lichtblau and James Risen, “Justice Deputy Resisted
Parts of Spy Program,” New York Times, January 1, 2006.
See also David Johnston, “President Intervened in Dispute
over Eavesdropping,” New York Times, May 16, 2007;

Dan Eggen and Paul Kane, “Gonzales Hospital Episode
Detailed,” Washington Post, May 16, 2007.

43. Confidential interview.

44. Eggen, “White House Secrecy.”

45. Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, “Behind the
Surveillance Debate,” Newsweek, August 1, 2007; Greg
Miller, “Court Puts Limits on Surveillance Abroad,” Los
Angeles Times, August 2, 2007.

46. Siobhan Gorman, “NS A Has Higher Profile, New
Problems,” Baltimore Sun, September 8, 2006.

47. Confidential interviews.

48. Gorman, “NSA Has Higher Profile.”

49. Ariel Sabar, “Want to Be a Spy? NSA Is Hiring,”
Baltimore Sun, April 10, 2004; Stephen Barr, “NSA
Makes No Secret of Stepped-Up Recruitment Effort,”
Washington Post, April 22, 2004; “A Good Spy Is Hard to
Fund,” U.S. News & World Report, November 22, 2004;
“Spy Agency to Undergo Major Changes,” Associated
Press, November 12, 2005; Gorman, “NSA Has Higher
Profile”; Siobhan Gorman, “budget Falling Short at
NSA,” Baltimore Sun, January 17, 2007; confidential
interviews.

50. As of 2005, the size of the U.S. intelligence budget

was forty-four billion dollars, for which see Scott Shane,
“Official Reveals Budget for U.S. Intelligence,” New York
Times, November 8, 2005. In May 2007, Congress
approved a forty-eight-billion-dollar intelligence budget,
for which see Walter Pincus, “House Panel Approves a
Record $48 billion for Spy Agencies,” Washington Post,
May 4, 2007.

51. Sheila Hotchkin, “NS A Will Let Its Dollars Do the
Talking,” San Antonio Express-News, April 16, 2005;
Mike Soraghan and Aldo Svaldi, “NS A Moving Some
Workers, Operations to Denver Area,” Denver Post,
January 24, 2006; Robert Gehrke, “Key Spy Agency
Expands to Utah,” Salt Lake Tribune, February 2, 2006;
Amy Choate, “NS A Seeks Linguists at BYU to Staff Utah
Center,” Salt Lake City Deseret Morning News, February
24, 2006.

52. “Emergency War Supplemental Hides Millions,” UPI,
February 20, 2006.

53. Scott Shane and Tom Bowman, “America’s Fortress
of Spies,” Baltimore Sun, December 3, 1995.

54. NS A/CSS, Transition 2001, December 2000, p. 33.
The author is grateful to Dr. Jeffrey T. Richelson for
making a copy of this document available.

55. There are twenty-two distinct Arabic dialects spoken
in the Muslim countries of North Africa and the Middle

East, each marked by subtle differences in vocabulary,
verb usage, and pronunciation.

56. Confidential interviews. For languages spoken by
linguists at Fort Gordon, see Joseph Gunder, “Tongue
Sharpening: GCF Helps Cryptologists Brush Up Before
Shipping Out,” InfoDomain, Summer 2007, p. 10.

57. Confidential interviews. For a brief description of the
work performed by NSA’s TAO, see Rowan
Scarborough, Sabotage: America’s Enemies Within the
CT4 (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2007), p. 161;
U.S. Army War College, Information Operations Primer:
Fundamentals of Information Operations, November
2006, pp. 88-89. A description of the work performed by
the navy’s computer network exploitation operators at
Fort Meade is contained in MIFPERSMAN 1306-980,
Navy Interactive ON-NET (ION) Computer Network
Exploitation (CNE) Operator Certification Program, May
29, 2007; MIFPERSMAN 1306-981, Navy Interactive
ON-NET (ION) Computer Network Exploitation (CNE)
Trainer Certification Program, May 29, 2007.

58. Technical Document 3131, SPA WAR Systems Center
San Diego Command History 2001, March 2002, p. 41,
http://www.spawar.navy.mi1/sti/publications/pubs/td/3 13 L

59. Memorandum, Zenker to Joint Tactical SIGINT
Architecture (JTSA) Working Group, Quarterly Meeting

Minutes-December 2001, December 31, 2001. This
document has since been reclassified and removed from
the Internet site where the author originally found it.

60. NS A/CSS, Transition 2001, December 2000, p. 19.
Shane Harris, “Internet Devices Threaten NSA’s Ability
to Gather Intelligence Legally,” National Journal, April
10, 2006; Richard Willing, “Growing Cellphone Use a
Problem for Spy Agencies,” USA Today, August 2, 2007;
confidential interview.

61. Loren B. Thompson, PowerPoint presentation, “ISR

Lessons of Iraq,” Defense News ISR Integration
Conference, November 18, 2003,

http://www.lexingtoninstitute.org/docs/435.pdf

62. Confidential interviews.

63. Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the
United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction,
Report to the President of the United States(W Sishington,
DC: GPO, March 31, 2005), p. 16.

64. U.S. House of Representatives, Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence, IC21: Intelligence Community
in the 21st Century, 104th Congress, 1st session, 1996, p.
189; U.S. House of Representatives, Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence, Report 104-578, Intelligence
Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1998, 105th Congress,
1st session, June 18, 1997, p. 18; Philip H. J. Davies,

“Information Warfare and the Future of the Spy,”
Information Communication and Society, vol. 2, no. 2
(Summer 1999); Warren P. Strobel, “The Sound of
Silence?,” U.S. News & World Report, February 14, 2000;
John Deutch and Jeffrey H. Smith, “Smarter Intelligence,”
Foreign Policy, January-February 2002.

65. Colum Lynch, “US Used UN to Spy on Iraq, Aides
Say,” Boston Globe, January 6, 1999; Barton Gellman,
“Annan Suspicious of UNSCOM Probe,” Washington
Post, January 6, 1999; Bruce W. Nelan, “Bugging
Saddam,” Time, January 18, 1999; Seymour M. Hersh,
“Saddam’s Best Friend,” New Yorker, April 5, 1999, pp.
32, 35; David Wise, “Fall Guy,” Washingtonian, July
1999, pp. 42-43.

66. John Pomfret, “China Finds Bugs on Jet Equipped in
U.S.,” Washington Post, January 19, 2002.

67. Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough, “Inside the Ring,”
Washington Times, January 12, 2007.

68. Loch K. Johnson, Secret Agencies: U.S. Intelligence
in a Hostile lFor/J(New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 1996), p. 21; Robert D. Steele, Improving National
Intelligence Support to Marine Corps Operational
Forces: Forty Specific Recommendations, September 3,
1991, p. 5, http://www.oss.net/Papers/reform . Quote from
interview, Herbert Levin, March 5, 1994, Foreign Affairs

Oral History Collection, Association for Diplomatic
Studies and Training, Arlington, VA.

69. David E. Sanger, “What Are Koreans Up To? U.S.
Agencies Can’t Agree,” New York Times, May 12, 2005.

70. Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee,
CM 5837, Annual Report 2002-2003, June 2003, p. 20.

71. Confidential interviews.

72. Confidential interviews.

73. NSA’s loss of “centrality of command” was reflected

for the first time in the 1994 edition of the agency’s
principal SIGINT operating policy document, U.S.
Signals Intelligence Directive 1, which states, “Certain
SIGINT collection and processing activities, specifically
designated by the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI)
as essential and integral to activities conducted under the
authority of NSCID No. 5 [U.S. Espionage and

Counterintelligence Activities Abroad], are specifically
exempted by NSCID No. 6 [Signals Intelligence] from the
control of DIRNSA/Chief, CSS (DIRNSA.CHCSS).”
NSA/CSS, United States Signals Intelligence Directive 1
(USSID IX SIGINT Operating Policy, June 13, 1994, p.
4, NSA FOIA.

74. Rowan Scarborough, “Lack of Fluency in Islamic
Languages Impedes U.S.,” Washington Times, July 2,

2007.

75. Confidential interviews. See also Lt. Colonel Stephen
K. Iwicki, “CSA’s Focus Area 16: Actionable
Intelligence,” Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin,
January-March 2005, p. 51.

76. Confidential interviews.

77. ILT Brian Noble, “SIGINT,” Dagger News, February

2006, p. 2,

http://www.506infantry.Org/pdf/506rct/feb_dagger_news.p

78. Major General Barbara Fast, Commander,
USAIC&FH, US Army Geospatial Intelligence,
PowerPoint presentation, presented at Geospatial
Intelligence Defense Conference, May 15, 2006.

79. NSA/CSS, director’s message, “Media Scrutiny on
TURBULENCE,” February 19, 2007, NS A FOIA;
Siobhan Gorman, “Costly NS A Initiative Has Shaky
Takeoff,” Baltimore i5w^,February II, 2007; Siobhan
Gorman, “NS A Program Draws Congress’ Ire,” Baltimore

March 28, 2007; Alice Lipowicz, “Hard Sell: NSA’s
Tech Reorg Faces Uphill Road to Win Over Critics,”
Washington Technology JmiQ 11, 2007.

80. NSA’s twenty-one-million-dollar electricity bill in
2000 from Dana Roscoe, “NS A Hosts Special Partnership
Breakfast,” NSA Newsletter,^. 4, NSA FOIA. For thirty-

million-dollar electricity bill in 2007, confidential
interview.

81. Siobhan Gorman, “NS A Electricity Crisis Gets Senate
Scrutiny,” Baltimore January 26, 2007; Siobhan
Gorman, “Power Supply Still a Vexation for the NS A,”
Baltimore Sun,}\mQ 24, 2007.

82. Gorman, “NSA Has Higher Profile.”

83. Gorman, “budget Falling Short.”

84. Confidential interview.

A Note on the A uthor

Matthew M. Aid is a leading intelligence historian, and
visiting fellow at the National Security Archive in
Washington, D.C. An expert on the National Security
Agency, he is a regular commentator on intelligence
matters for the New York Times, the Financial Times, the
National Journal, the Associated Press, CBS News, NPR,
and many other media outlets. He lives in Washington,
D.C.

Copyright © 2009 by Matthew M. Aid

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or
reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written
permission from the publisher except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For
information address Bloomsbury Press, 175 Fifth Avenue,

New York, NY 10010.

Published by Bloomsbury Press, New York

All papers used by Bloomsbury Press are natural,
recyclable products made from wood grown in well-
managed forests. The manufacturing processes conform
to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-
PUBLICATION DATA

Aid, Matthew M., 1958-
The secret sentry : the untold history of the
National Security Agency / Matthew M. Aid.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.
elSBN: 978-1-60819-179-6

1. United States. National Security Agency — History. 2.

Intelligence service — ^United States. 3. Electronic
surveillance — ^United States. 4. United States — History —

1945- 1. Title. IL Title: Secret sentry, the untold history of
the NSA. III. Title: Untold history of the National

Security Agency.

UB256.U6A53 2009
327. 1273^dc22
2008037442

First U.S. Edition 2009

13579108642

Typeset by Westchester Book Group
Printed in the United States of America by Quebecor

World Fairfield